Clark Blaise's Selected Essays brings together another aspect of his tremendous and courageous oeuvre: belle lettres, essays and occasional pieces which range over autobiography, his French-Canadian heritage, the craft of fiction, American fiction, Australian fiction, and the work of such individual writers and Jack Kerouac, V.S. Naipaul, Salmon Rushdie, Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, and Bernard Malamud, his friend and mentor.
"More than any other writer, Blaise has shown how Canada is linked by geography, immigration, and cultural affinity to the wider world..."
The National Post
"The biographical bent is just one aspect of Blaise's critical perspective, albeit, I believe, the dominant one. But the book also contains valuable discussions regarding the craft of writing, as well as more general historical/thematic reflections on literature and culture. Particularly good are the observations on how Americans look at Canadians, and how we look at them. Observations that are, i
Good Reports
"There is much substance in these essays to ponder; and to unsettle our assumptions, as good essays should."
