Although he’s known as a fine writer of fiction, I think John Metcalf is known even better as an editor—one who most writers can only dream of having as a helpmate on their work—this collection of essays and stories affords the rest of us a glimpse into the lives of some of those fortunate enough to have been on the receiving end of his blue pencil.
In Off the Record, six authors, happily (to my mind at least) all of them women, lay out summaries of their lives in essays prompted by questions posed to them by Metcalf. Their replies vary greatly—not only in the length of their responses but also in the range of experience in the lives they’ve led.
With clarity as sure as I’ve come to expect from him, Metcalf lays out his rules of engagement in a brief foreword. “My starting point with all six was to dig into what had lured them into this writing life. I wanted them to recall the books that had thrilled them…the time when language had first exploded upon them.” Although he admits to having elicited their responses through questions, he explains why those questions have been deleted from the responses, explaining that they “…seemed to me rather like leaving up unsightly scaffolding when the building was finished.”
I’ll admit to being grateful that some of these authors inserted their breaks into their ‘memoir’ essays. These varied from the straightforward, as in Cynthia Flood’s recollections which included headings for Family, Secondary School, Politics and Writing to the more fanciful banners in Elise Levine’s: Privacy, Grandiosity, Forthness. And I’ll also admit that some of them rambled on far too long for me, but then, maybe I’m just overly impatient when it comes to listening.
Despite my grumblings about some of them going on too long, there’s much to be gleaned from what they say, especially when it comes to advice about writing. In this respect, I share just a few of these nuggets, including one that I believe came up more than once: the value of re-reading books that have seemed important to us. For one thing, we get a peekaboo into who it was we once were, back when a particular book seemed so earth-shakingly important. But another benefit is seeing new layers of what the author was doing (or at least trying to do).
Besides the memoir and writing advice essays, each author has also contributed a short piece of previously published fiction. These range as widely as do the voices of these women, with perhaps the most magical being Kathy Page’s “Low Tide” with a Selkie (or what seems like one) as its narrator.
But going back again to Cynthia Flood, this time to her short story, “Calm.” She’s given us a series of notebook entries that track her progress in formulating the piece. She begins with the original ‘initiating incident’: “I woke to hear four horses clop-clopping down a nearby street. Why, at night? As the rhythmic sound faded, I began drifting…and saw a boy, maybe ten, awake. Unhappy, lonely. He heard clop-clop. Looked out his window. Saw them? No. Too soon. But he could try to find them…I went back to sleep.” She then goes on with several different journal entries that mark her progress (and questions) over the month it took to complete the piece. So wonderfully practical—certainly not the kind of writing advice one often sees.
While each author has her way of explaining, I’d be remiss if I didn’t cite the example offered by Caroline Adderson, who reinforces the notion of the importance of sound—just as key in prose as in poetry, right down to the number of syllables in the sentence she uses to illustrate her point. As she describes it, she’s after a “…melding of meaning, not just in the imagery…but in the sound of the words.”
If you write—or even just think you’d like to write—you can’t go wrong with adding this anthology to the stack on your nightstand.
About the Editor
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.
- Publisher : Biblioasis (Dec 5 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1771965452
- ISBN-13 : 978-1771965453
Heidi Greco lives and writes in Surrey, BC on the territory of the Semiahmoo Nation and land that remembers the now-extinct Nicomekl People. Her most recent book, Glorious Birds (from Vancouver's Anvil Press) is an extended homage to one of her favourite films, Harold and Maude, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2021. More info at her website, heidigreco.ca
(Photo credit: George Omorean)