Early morning. Snow, falling steadily, the world muffled like the people who trudge by, snowflakes drifted thickly on the shoulders of their dark coats and on their fur hats and hoods, their necks wrapped in wooly scarves. The room is dim, no shafts of eastern sunlight today. J., unusually, is still sleeping. I light two votive candles and a small stick of incense, and spend the next half hour in meditation. Then I make a cup of tea, and while it cools, stretch my body a little. I look out the window at the snow. The world closes in in front of the white veil; the far trees disappear; colors mute to monochrome, and the close view sharpens: the details on a red parka, a hand-knitted hat, the snow on someone's tapestry handbag. I think of the squirrels and sparrows and wonder where they're hiding, tails curled onto their backs, wings and head tucked into a ball.
How much better the day feels, I'm reminded, when there's the time and silence to begin like this. And that is really up to me.
Last night we lit a fire and ate in front of it, listening to jazz, and then, later, to the radio program "Ideas" on CBC One, about Robert Weaver, dubbed "the godfather of CanLit." He was a rather self-made editor who founded the radio program Anthology, for which the CBC bought and presented short stories and poetry, and went on to be in charge of CBC literary programming for 40 years. Through this forum, Weaver gave a start and years of encouragement to many authors who subsequently brought Canadian literature out of the shadow of its colonial, frontier past, when even Canadians believed that good writing came from elsewhere:writers like Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler, Alice Munro.
Weaver, who died recently at age 87, comes across in these interviews as gentle, unpretentious, and self-effacing. An essayist and critic himself, he attached little importance to his own writing. He was, first and foremost, an editor, and it was the letters from Weaver to these fledgling writers that intrigued me: honest, direct, critical, but always encouraging if he felt the raw material was worthy. He sent stories and poems back with suggestions that the best writers often followed, and stayed in correspondence with writers like Munro during years when, as she said, "I was having children, feeling very far from the world of literature, and sometimes wrote only one story a year -- and that one was probably not very good!" Outside of the Canadian literary world, few people even know his name - I certainly didn't - but the interviews with Weaver himself and the authors he encouraged describe his contribution unequivocally; the number of books dedicated to him is another indication. I was touched by his humility, because behind it clearly stood a piercing intellect, discernment, understanding of the writing mentality in all its brashness and insecurity, and kindness.
The second half of the interview airs tonight at 9:05 EST. You can listen online.
Comments