Notice bibliographique
Résumé
Reviewed by: Barry Callaghan: Essays on His Works W.J. Keith (bio) Priscila Uppal , editor. Barry Callaghan: Essays on His Works. Guernica. 2007. 524. $20.00 In the culminating interview at the end of this impressive collection of essays, William Kennedy describes Barry Callaghan as 'noted pool and horseplayer, high roller and artist, who writes powerful poetry, has reported on wars, taught literature, founded and run a literary magazine, fronted a TV show, sung the blues, and has perpetually told wondrous stories and stirring lies.' Not the conventional pattern for a writer who becomes the subject of a 500-page academic book. In consequence, this will not be a conventional academic review. Although most of the contributors (including Callaghan himself) are technically classifiable as academics, this is no dry scholarly tome. It is comprehensive, informative, compelling. The sole dud among the essays is an unwitting parody of a scholarly article that brings the burden of some twenty volumes of 'theory' to bear on a four-page short story that can get along very well without it. For the rest, Priscila Uppal has done a thorough job in assembling the right people to present the case for this many-sided writer who, as she notes, laboured long under the shadow of his at-least-once-famous father and has hitherto been much better known in Europe and beyond than in his native country. At once, the coherence implicit in his many varied interests becomes clear. Even if we confine our attention to his creative activities, he is notable for his poetry (The Hogg Poems), his paintings and drawings (he might well have become a visual artist), his short fiction (The Black Queen Stories), his two novels, his journalistic articles (Essays and Encounters - two out, one still to come), his memoir (Barrelhouse Kings), his translations (too numerous to list), and his editorial and publishing activities (Exile and Exile Editions). It could be argued that he has established himself, in the most exact sense of the phrase, as Canada's most versatile man of letters. And yet . . . if one turns from this collection of eulogies to his writings, it becomes equally clear that a good percentage of the contributors are admirers, friends, and even cronies of Callaghan. Fair enough, but a hint of cliquishness obtrudes. Notably absent is the aggressive, look-for-a-chink-in-the-armour approach that is so conspicuous in his own stance towards the subjects he chooses for his articles and interviews. Do some necessary qualifications need to be made? [End Page 501] I believe so. The dominating qualities that emerge from a reading of his work are those of the relentless, abrasive, or (to employ his own favoured vocabulary) shit-stirring investigative journalist. Much has been made, for instance, of his defiant interview of Golda Meir in 1970, yet their personalities appear remarkably similar: tough, determined, heedless of contrary views. By the same token, his sniping at such establishment figures as Donald Creighton or Hugh MacLennan may well stem from an uneasy suspicion that their prejudices are the obverse of his own. He paints himself (along with others) in heightened colours as a lifelong 'bad boy,' a rebel against cant and the official decencies (his contempt for 'respectable people' is evident throughout). Yet there are signs that he is less original than hewould have us believe - an updated version of the conventionally unconventional nineteenth-century Bohemian, eager 'pour épater le bourgeois.' In some respects he is a victim of the blindnesses of his own times. Thus in Barrelhouse Kings he will quote a 1950s news-cutting to expose the racism of the period, but regularly refers to 'WASPS' without any consciousness of a double standard. If he is viewed clinically, from outside, one is aware of many chips on his shoulders, many motes in his eyes. A skewed view? Perhaps, but no more so that the enthusiastic skewed view of Uppal's collection. Callaghan never spares those he dislikes; why should they spare him? I welcome this book for its challenge to current assumptions, and I have learned much from it. But its basic position should be approached with skepticism. It may well be the truth, but not...
Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.
Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction distillée sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Apprise à partir de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Gemma. Le mode candidate est l'union des têtes enseignantes seuillées; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont ni des étiquettes humaines ni des étiquettes directes de modèles de pointe.
Scores Codex et Gemma par catégorie
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Communication savante | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Science ouverte | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,003 | 0,000 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule tête enseignante, pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».