This volume represents the first full-scale appreciation of Clark Blaise's writing in more than twenty-five years -- and the first comprehensive study of his now more than twenty highly accomplished books of fiction, autobiography, and nonfiction. Among the eighteen contributions are previously published essays by Margaret Atwood, Robert Lecker, Alexander MacLeod, Catherine Sheldrick Ross, and Ray Smith, along with new essays by Stephen Henighan, W.H. New, Sandra Sabatini, J.R. (Tim) Struthers, and, notably, Clark Blaise himself.
As important as these essays are for their critical insights into Blaise's writing, they also open up exciting possibilities for understanding and creating essays as unique works of art.
For more than a half-century starting with the publication in 1962 of his first story, “A Fish Like a Buzzard,” Clark Blaise has presented readers with work after work infused with all he has learned from endless physical and mental travels, limitless reading, and extensive reflection on and teaching of literature, charging his writing with every iota of knowledge and feeling and imagination and craft he possesses.
Clark Blaise has presented readers with work after work infused with all he has learned from endless physical and mental travels, limitless reading, and extensive reflection on and teaching of literature, charging his writing with every iota of knowledge and feeling and imagination and craft he possesses.
J.R. (Tim) Struthers
In the whole history of Canadian and American literature, I do not think there is another writer whose work is more directly hard-wired to the revolutionary socio-spatial transformations this continent has experienced from the middle of the twentieth century to the present.
Alexander MacLeod
Much of Blaise’s work has circled around questions that were a little ahead of their time when he first began investigating them, but now seem highly contemporary: Who am I? Where am I? Where do I belong? Does nationality count for anything? Am I a part of all that I have met? What airport is this anyway?
Margaret Atwood