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Imagining Canadian Literature: The Selected Letters
This edited collection of Jack McClelland's correspondence features many of his letters during the most significant period of the Canadian publishing industry, just as Canadian writers were gaining international recognition in the fifties, sixties and seventies. The letters are entertaining to read, and provide a record of the formative years of Canadian literature. This collection is arranged chronologically by decade, with each section set in context by Sam Solecki. Imagining Canadian Literature traces the paths of the careers of many Canadian literary figures, Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Earle Birney, Leonard Cohen, Margaret Laurence, Irving Layton, Farley Mowat, Peter C. Newman, Al Purdy.
324 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 17, 2023
A primer on the glory-days of the Canadian publishing industry, revealed in the letters of Jack McClelland, the man who came to epitomize Nationalism in Canadian Literature.
Jack inherited his father’s 40-year-old publishing company when he was demobilized after WWII. Therefore, being presented the keys to the kingdom, he proceeded to expand the empire. Jack’s world was a world of hardcovers (McClelland & Stewart went into mass paperbacks only in 1977), huge print runs on old technology, manuscripts that had to be trucked by postal mail, pre-internet and pre-social media. And yet his pressures were similar to the ones we as publishers face today: US publishers had cornered the majority of the Canadian market, local printers were more expensive than foreign alternatives, and the spirit of customer service and efficiency in the publishing industry was unheard of. Jack agonized over the look and feel of book covers, he argued over title names, and he would be slighted if a writer queried their royalty statement.
Publishers and authors did not appear to do much business by phone in those days, for Jack wrote voluminous letters, sometimes on the most trivial matters – he had the aid of a secretary and a Dictaphone. I suppose, as he alludes to Mordecai Richler in 1968 and then re-affirms to Margaret Laurence in 1982, he was expecting his letters to be published post-retirement and read thereafter as essential Canadian publishing history – which they seem to have been done by the publication of this book in 1998. Other than for his letters, Jack never wrote a book himself.
As a publisher, he was the “big picture guy” – a super salesman, staging grand promo events, arranging conferences to select the 100 greatest Canadian books (to which event, strangely, only M&S authors had access while others had to fight to get in), and championing cash-cows like the New Canadian Library. He was not shy to lobby parliament for preferential treatment for Canadian writers and publishers, and wield his “influence” with the Canada Council for the Arts. And he took bets on obscure books if they struck a chord in him, like Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen and Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. And, given his cavalier approach, M&S struggled financially from the late ‘60s until Jack sold the firm in 1985.
Not into the more technical aspects of publishing, i.e., editing, production etc.,—he had a staff of nearly a 100 for that—Jack focussed on relationship management, public and government relations, and marketing. His kept his favourite authors close, and his correspondence with them is the best parts of this collection: frank, honest, witty, sometimes brutal, and sometimes vulnerable and apologetic. I counted Pierre Berton, Al Purdy, Farley Mowat, Margaret Atwood, in addition to Cohen and Laurence among his “inner circle.”
Being a small publisher in Canada myself (certainly not in Jack’s league), I found this book refreshingly comforting – the big guys didn’t have it easy, is what I came away with. And yet, Jack’s zeal and commitment to this strange industry is reassuring to us who plod in the dark wondering what the heck we’ve got into that we can’t seem to extricate ourselves from. And yet I salivate when Jack says 250,000 copies was a good print run, when we count a Canadian best-seller today as 5000 copies sold.
Jack inherited his father’s 40-year-old publishing company when he was demobilized after WWII. Therefore, being presented the keys to the kingdom, he proceeded to expand the empire. Jack’s world was a world of hardcovers (McClelland & Stewart went into mass paperbacks only in 1977), huge print runs on old technology, manuscripts that had to be trucked by postal mail, pre-internet and pre-social media. And yet his pressures were similar to the ones we as publishers face today: US publishers had cornered the majority of the Canadian market, local printers were more expensive than foreign alternatives, and the spirit of customer service and efficiency in the publishing industry was unheard of. Jack agonized over the look and feel of book covers, he argued over title names, and he would be slighted if a writer queried their royalty statement.
Publishers and authors did not appear to do much business by phone in those days, for Jack wrote voluminous letters, sometimes on the most trivial matters – he had the aid of a secretary and a Dictaphone. I suppose, as he alludes to Mordecai Richler in 1968 and then re-affirms to Margaret Laurence in 1982, he was expecting his letters to be published post-retirement and read thereafter as essential Canadian publishing history – which they seem to have been done by the publication of this book in 1998. Other than for his letters, Jack never wrote a book himself.
As a publisher, he was the “big picture guy” – a super salesman, staging grand promo events, arranging conferences to select the 100 greatest Canadian books (to which event, strangely, only M&S authors had access while others had to fight to get in), and championing cash-cows like the New Canadian Library. He was not shy to lobby parliament for preferential treatment for Canadian writers and publishers, and wield his “influence” with the Canada Council for the Arts. And he took bets on obscure books if they struck a chord in him, like Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen and Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. And, given his cavalier approach, M&S struggled financially from the late ‘60s until Jack sold the firm in 1985.
Not into the more technical aspects of publishing, i.e., editing, production etc.,—he had a staff of nearly a 100 for that—Jack focussed on relationship management, public and government relations, and marketing. His kept his favourite authors close, and his correspondence with them is the best parts of this collection: frank, honest, witty, sometimes brutal, and sometimes vulnerable and apologetic. I counted Pierre Berton, Al Purdy, Farley Mowat, Margaret Atwood, in addition to Cohen and Laurence among his “inner circle.”
Being a small publisher in Canada myself (certainly not in Jack’s league), I found this book refreshingly comforting – the big guys didn’t have it easy, is what I came away with. And yet, Jack’s zeal and commitment to this strange industry is reassuring to us who plod in the dark wondering what the heck we’ve got into that we can’t seem to extricate ourselves from. And yet I salivate when Jack says 250,000 copies was a good print run, when we count a Canadian best-seller today as 5000 copies sold.
January 19, 2024
Really, a great collection, a nice insight into McClelland’s life work and the style of many famed Canadian writers. Also, and this helps, some hilarious quotes.
February 14, 2012
A time capsule of the growth of Canadian literature during the fifties and sixties, with hilarious letter to and from many of the writers of
McClelland and Stewart.
McClelland and Stewart.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews