‘Collecting Stamps Would Have Been More Fun’: Canadian Publishing and the Correspondence of Sinclair Ross, 1933–1986 (review)

Reviewed by: ‘Collecting Stamps Would Have Been More Fun’: Canadian Publishing and the Correspondence of Sinclair Ross, 1933–1986 John J. O’connor (bio) Jordan Stouck and David Stouck, editors. ‘Collecting Stamps Would Have Been More Fun’: Canadian Publishing and the Correspondence of Sinclair Ross, 1933–1986. University of Alberta Press. xxxiv, 304. $34.95 Had Sinclair Ross been a less assiduous correspondent, he might have written more fiction. Always a respectful and considerate letter writer, Ross felt obliged to answer all who wrote to him, whether high-school student or scholarly academic, fellow writer, journalist, or editor. Socially quite shy (Birney called him ‘monosyllabic’ when they met in England during the war), Ross could be remarkably expansive – even voluble, cajoling, drily witty – in the more than 700 letters and cards he wrote over almost seventy years, beginning with those to his mother [End Page 728] and then to classmates in 1923–24 and concluding with letters he dictated to a variety of interested readers and friends in the 1990s. At least 500 have survived. This volume contains 100 written by Ross as well as thirty to him and six about him. While Ross’s letters range from only a sentence or two to a remarkable thirty-seven-page typed letter, individual selections here vary from a paragraph to several pages and include some of the most important letters Ross wrote about his life and work. They are arranged chronologically in five chapters organized around each of Ross’s four published novels, with a concluding section on his legacy as ‘Literary Forefather’ to writers such as Laurence, Atwood, Suknaski, and Vanderhaeghe. In addition, this selection usefully reproduces a transcription of Ross’s 1970 OISE interview, updates Latham’s bibliography of secondary materials, and provides an informative summary of some ‘Archival Sources.’ It also includes photocopies of two postcards, a manuscript page, two sketches of Ross by Bickerstaff and Macdonald, and a dozen photographs of Ross and some of his correspondents. Happily, the editors do expand the range of the volume somewhat beyond the focus of the subtitle and provide many informative cross-references and essential annotations to explain allusions that would otherwise undoubtedly puzzle many readers. But even someone widely and deeply familiar with Ross’s work will encounter much that is new in this selection – in itself a testament to its general value – as the editors capture and convey a strong sense of the hesitant hope and modest progress of Ross’s solitary but sustained writing life. Of particular interest are the 1933 letter from Ross’s uncle, the wartime letters to two Winnipeg correspondents, and units within the selection that detail Ross’s attempt to publish a volume of short stories in the late 1940s, his long mid-fifties collaboration with John Gray on the publication of The Well, the correspondence with Pamela Fry regarding Whir of Gold, and the failed attempt to publish ‘Price above Rubies,’ the rejected sequel to Sawbones Memorial. Readers may also follow here Ross’s responses to the evolving critical attention to his masterpiece, As For Me and My House, throughout this writing life. Furthermore, juxtapositions in the text helpfully track a single issue through several exchanges, such as Ross’s refusal to apply for a Canada Council grant. They will also greatly appreciate this access to individual letters that reveal the heart and soul of Ross’s literary struggles and success, such as his 1941 application to the Guggenheim Foundation to write a Riel novel, Sheila Kieran’s account of her meeting with Ross in Màlaga in 1972, and his feisty 1973 letter to Anna Porter when he submitted his last novel for publication. At the same time, however, several notes of caution must be sounded here. The quoted title does not exactly reproduce Ross’s remark about his career from letters written in 1972 and 1978. Given that the editors faced serious challenges deciphering John Foster Fraser’s and Ross’s own [End Page 729] handwriting (he regularly called it a ‘scrawl’), transcription errors in several parts of this volume are understandable if also unacceptable, since a sustained scrutiny eventually permits an accurate interpretation. Thus, in the opening letter, to...

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