Prof. Nick Mount on Arrival: The Story of CanLit

I met with Professor Nick Mount at his University of Toronto offices in "Toronto" to discuss his book Arrival, The Story of CanLit.

We talk among other things about the pronunciation of Toronto, the non-Toronto-centricity of his book, Alistair MacLeod, the CanLit boom, early Canadian writers publishing first in the United States, novels that are so bad they're good, the 1960s, history turning into myth, academic versus commercial success, reviews of the book, Margaret Atwood's Survival, prosperity versus affluence, 1959 and 1974, economics and the arts, the Massey Report, the Canada Council, universities, Jack McClelland, the influence of Sheila Watson's The Double Hook, Arrival's sidebar star system, the erasure (or not) of Blackness, and Aboriginal works, from the CanLit canon, Austin Clarke, dotted points of light, #metoo and the Bahamas.

Photo by N. Maxwell Lander