Review of "Collecting Stamps Would Have Been More Fun": Canadian Publishing and the Correspondence of Sinclair Ross, 1933-1986 selected and with an introduction by Jordan Stouck; annotations by David Stouck

Authors

Andrew Lesk, University of Toronto

Date of this Version

Summer 2011

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 31:3 (Summer 2011).

Comments

Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.

Abstract

A book not just for completists, the Stoucks' effort succeeds in illuminating the publishing record of one of Canada's most secretive authors. For those who have not read much criticism on Ross, this book will aid in understanding one very representative mid-twentieth-century Canadian author's publishing and artistic struggles.

Most striking is Jordan Stouck's note-perfect introduction, one that is academically rigorous yet free of jargon and platitudes. Stouck begins at, well, the beginning, in noting that Ross's As For Me and My House is "an originary text in western Canadian literature," although Ross himself "perceived his literary career as a failure." From a publishing perspective this is true; from a literary standpoint, not exactly. Ross's first novel became a best-seller, but only after it was given a boost by publishers eager to start a Canadian canon (and to profit from that), about seventeen years after its initial publication.