Mavis Gallant: The Writer as Rapscallion II, by Linda Leith
II. Escape
The second in a series of three excerpts from a talk presented at the Atwater Library in Montreal, March 6, 2014.
Mavis Gallant, née Mavis Young
[Photo: Glay Sperling]
Writer Erika Ritter
Not only do I think your launch of your online literary
salon is a great idea, I am doubly attracted because of your invocation of the
great Tony Hancock and his eponymous TV show of the late 50s--perhaps even into
the early 60s?
You and I grew up in different places, Linda, before we wound up at McGill at more or less the same time in our late teens and early 20s. But clearly there was a common element in our childhoods, in that joint appreciation of Hancock. CBC was the ONLY network available in Saskatchewan, even in the late 50s, and so we were all pretty much hostage to its offerings. Luckily for my mother (who shared my passion) and me, the network got hold of Hancock's Half Hour and showed those episodes--some of them again and again, which was also fine with my mother and me.
Who can forget Hancock's saggy, saturnine face in a bunny costume he was forced to wear while working as a toy store clerk--until he was outed by a child shrieking in a very English accent, "You're not Uncle Bunny! Uncle Bunny is good and kind!"? What about the missing final page of the murder mystery "Lady, Don't Fall Backwards," which Tony and his ever-amiable sidekick Sidney James tried to track down? And, of course, as you've observed in your post, Linda, Hancock's astute observations and loud laments about many aspects of life, including the circular necessity of knowing the word you want to look up in the dictionary before you look it up.
This comment of mine is mainly intended to wish you bon voyage
and bonne chance with the launch of the online salon--as well as offer a quick
thank you for assuring me that Tony Hancock lives on for you as he does for me.
Erika Ritter
Erika Ritter is a novelist, playwright, essayist and broadcaster, whose published works include: “Automatic Pilot,” a Chalmers-Award-winning play; three collections of essays: Urban Scrawl, Ritter in Residence, and The Great Big Book of Guys: Alphabetical Encounters with Men; a novel, The Hidden Life of Humans; and a non-fiction work, The Dog by the Cradle, The Serpent Beneath: Some Paradoxes of Human-Animal Relationships, shortlisted for the Writers Trust Non-Fiction prize in 2009. www.erikaritter.com.
II. Escape
The second in a series of three excerpts from a talk presented at the Atwater Library in Montreal, March 6, 2014.
Mavis Gallant, née Mavis Young
[Photo: Glay Sperling]
by Guy Tiphane
A visit to schools supported by Child Aid, an organization that sets up school libraries and reading programs in poor areas of Guatemala.
The assumption in “One Night at the Risiera” that the Risiera killed mainly Jews and the silence about the other victims may just be examples of Morris’s fabled carelessness and the ignorance of her reviewers, in homage to her lyrical cluelessness.
So, do you believe me, or the great Jan Morris? Do you trust me or the woman who says that Toronto is on Lake Superior, that there is a great hatter on a street in Toronto called Spandia, and that Yonge Street runs all the way to the “prairie farmlands”?
Hermes and the Infant Dionysos
One is always tempted to go naked in Greece: heat and history seem to demand it, and Irving Layton probably did, even though in the first Olympic games athletes wore protective jock straps, nudes on vases notwithstanding.