Why is this country so devoid of any literary tradition...

vague reason. feminism developed after 1970s. If you had it in you, you would have had that by then.
Also, it is unclear how feminism is supposed interfere with good writing.

>1970 feminism starts

why? we aren't that bad

You were saying?

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the kind that you say 'block' the path of literature couldn't have started before that.

Canadians could’ve had French cuisine, British culture, and American technology. Instead, they chose French technology, British cuisine, and American culture. Just think about that.

Does that mean you like the Quebecois?

that doesn't explain France tho

True, but the French are unhappy no matter how high the standard of living.

mankind was matriarchal for most of its history, patriarchy was the apex of civilization, canada has always been backwards and matriarchal, people live more like animals here. thought and creativity is actively discouraged. it's a predominantly christian nation too

woke

Some post the bear book

*someone

I've been targeting University of British Columbia. To study and get employed there eventually. This thread got me worried. Should I try for US instead?

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UBC is a great university. I'd still aim for it.

Lol please user for the love of god dont take anything you read on here at face value

Anne of Green Gables
Beautiful Losers
In the Skin of a Lion
The English Patient
Black Robe
Neuromancer

It's ok, I'm not really offended by your opinion since you're a dumb phoneposter.

>and get employed there eventually
yes, for that, the US is a better choice. You'll be a bourgeoisie in canada.

>This thread got me worried
if this is true, you need to kill yourself as soon as possible.

Huh? I'm posting from my PC. What are you talking about?

Of course.

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The fuck is your problem then?

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are you even fucking looking?

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What are you babbling about? Canada has had many fine writers and poets. Considering how recent a country we are, and how sparsely populated, we punch way above our weight.

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Here you go.
The pinnacle of Canadain literature.

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French technology is good and American culture not always that bad.

canada eh?

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Well, at least we're experimental.

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probably in the top 5 national epics desu

Population size?
Canada and Australia each have about 20 million people right? Combine that with a shorter national history and you get very few writers.
America has the advantage of a very large population, and so they have produced more great writers in their short history than the other Anglo colonies, but still far fewer than European nations that have existed for a thousand years or more.

Literal greatest Canadian poet of all time coming through. Carson babies need not apply.

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Looks like a pedo

Cool story bro.

China, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Philippines all these countries have the largest population size and also lived (and living) a lot of harsh life. How many greats have they produced?

They’re not white

Gaston Miron? Outside of Quebec you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who knew who he was, actually.

>china hasn't produced greats
are you retarded or only looking for that special type of pretentious garbage that appeals most to you?

fell into the white people genetically superior meme didn't you

Women are subhuman lel.

No, just that Europeans have been the only people with enough time on their hands to sit down and write novels

actual physical cringe

>i don't know anything about canadian literature therefore it must not have a literary traditioN!

N!

>mankind was matriarchal for most of its history
proofs? because hunter gatherer societies we study are generally dominated by men(what a surprise they're way bigger and stronger)

He’s published by Gallimard ffs... although popularity shouldn’t even be a question here.

I don't actively seek out literature of other countries, yet I know a lot of them. If Canada had something worthwhile, it would have been in forefront.

Bullshit lol

your pea sized brain just can't comprehend the fact that canada does have a strong literary culture and tradition.

Also
Douglas Coupland
Neal Stephenson

because it´s a fake nation, no values, no culture, nothing, niente, nada, read this if you want to know more about it

amazon.es/Canada-Canadian-Question-Goldwin-Smith/dp/0543909069

Leaf here. Canada is a reflection of a reflection. A nation that has no identity of its own. Its only characteristics are the things which distinguish it from America and England. Its identity is purely retalitory. Look into Northrop Frye if you're interested in looking further into this phenomenon.

>hunter gatherer societies
matrilineal

read the origins of family, private property, and the state by engels

>are generally dominated by men(what a surprise they're way bigger and stronger)
>are
>present tense
oh right and capitalism is just an extension of hunter gatherer 'society,' right? and that absolutely justifies hegemonic masculinity.

>American culture not always that bad
Says a lot about it that this is the best you could come up with in its defence.

I think we can all agree that Canada is a miserable frozen shithole full of snide contrarians, which really goes without saying, but the real reason its quality contributions to the canon of world literature can be counted on one hand isn't because of its national character, which, petulant and effete and inauthentically mannered as it is, could potentially produce an abundance of great works under the right conditions, as we've seen in England and France, but rather because historical circumstance conspired to smother this young nation in its crib, as Canada barely had a century between its settlement in significant numbers and its subsumption into the Globalhomo nightmare hellscape that is designed specifically to annihilate such potential by drowning the populace in demoralizing and cancerous trash instead of art. This is why leaking garbage like Margaret Atwood is the only thing Canada has to offer anymore. I am ashamed to admit that I am Canadian, but not by choice.

>read the origins of family, private property, and the state by engels
gringe

No, we can't agree. That's utter horseshit. Go read some more, kid.

>subsumption into the Globalhomo nightmare hellscape that is designed specifically to annihilate such potential
true

Thank you for the living example. Toronto?

nice 50 year old joke fag

No, I'm just over 23 and have actually read a lot of CanLit.

Vancouver?

Canadian here, based and true.

could be a Concordia or McGill litfaggot.

opinion on Vancouver? Planning on moving there

One could imagine that the general culture of dissatisfaction in france would play into this rich literary tradition

>because historical circumstance conspired to smother this young nation in its crib
And what conspiracy will that be user?

Why don't you move to some place with more affordable housing, like Hong Kong or the International Space Station?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
DO quit your day job!

drug addicts everywhere, owned in large part by the chinese, artificially inflated housing prices

>Canada founded in 1867
>last province to join was 1949
>must cultural money goes to French language arts
Why is there no tradition, why? A real mystery.

jealousy breeds hate

>doesn't know what capitalism is
>too steeped in critical theory derp to have a real argument

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Canada and the Canadian Question is an 1891 book written by British-Canadian author Goldwin Smith that analyzes 19th-century Canada.

Smith calls the country a profoundly unnatural one, with no real reason to exist. He believes that it would be far more natural for the Canadian confederation and the United States to merge into a single country, with few significant differences between the two peoples.

The Canadian system of government is considered to be fundamentally worse than the US model, with Canada being a far more elitist country. The Canadian nation is portrayed to be a geographic, ethnic, economic and political absurdity, with its ultimate destiny in political union with the United States.

t. too young to remember Canada prior to Harper or Turdeau.

>The Canadian system of government is considered to be fundamentally worse than the US model
that has proven to be extremely true

That is because you can never keep the Irish spirit down, and also that you wouldn't have a British literary tradition without Ireland.

Don't. People are assholes there. Worse than Toronto believe it or not. Too many druggies, too expensive to live in, soulless.

>a few tens of millions total population
>confederated in 1867
for the population and relatively young age, Canada has a good literary tradition. progressiveism is running rampant in the universities at the moment, but Canada is still pretty great

to be honest, it's absurd not to have universal basic medial coverage, but okay

I was born when the PM was Pierre Trudeau, not Justin.

d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/tbacig/cst1030/1030anth/survival.html
>But the main idea is the first one: hanging on,staying alive. Canadians are forever taking the national pulse like doctors at a sickbed: the aim is not to see whether the patient will live well but simply whether he will live at all. Our central idea is one which generates, not the excitement and sense of adventure or danger which the Frontier holds out, not the smugness and/or sense of security, of everything in its place, which The Island can offer, but an almost intolerable anxiety. Our stories are likely to be tales not of those who made it but of those who made it back, from the awful experience -- the North, the snowstorm, the sinking ship -- that killed everyone else. The survivor has no triumph or victory but the fact of his survival; he has little after his ordeal that he did not have before, except gratitude for having escaped with his life.

~~~ Atwood ~~~

Thank God for Québécois and Acadiens lol.

such obvious holocaust bait

damn, I was the guy that said above he was planning UBC Vancouver. So much negative reviews, about Canada, about the city...

Canadian education is better tho

In case you haven't notice there aren't any good literary countries except for the USA

yeah, well Vancouver blows. should've gone for McGill

They’re too soft. You need conflict (and white/Asian people) to write literature. The only real ways to do this as a country is to either exist for a long time OR be affronted with constant strife daily. Canada has neither qualities, it’s issues irrelevant; a fact made apparent by its much more impressive and much more dysfunctional neighbor. They have no hope, as do all commonwealth countries in their situation (Australia, New Zealand, etc.). It’s best to just overlook them.

How is 'As for Me and My House'? Someone told me a few years ago that it's the best novel written in Canada.

Vancouver Yea Forums meetup when

Montreal, Quebec is better? in what way?

>The only real ways to do this as a country is to either exist for a long time OR be affronted with constant strife daily.

Actual culture, some architecture that isn't horrifyingly ugly, better food, more affordable

weak bait

Whats this culture you’ve been touting besides the visceral resentment

The idea that great literature is created by a population that lives in strife ought to be challenged by Canada not having great national literature. Existence in Canada has always been a battle against the elements, far more so than in the US. Largely similar natural environment to Russia, which has a well known literary canon.

The reality is that it’s affluence, rather than poverty which facilitates great literature. It’s the existence of a class which is educated and reads fine literature, and has the wealth to support a community of authors and the apparatus for developing authors.

For most of Canada’s history you had a far smaller, poorer, less well educated, and dispersed population than the US, which means that the development of a community of writers and readers is far slower. Any great intellects born in Canada would find their way to America or Great Britain.

Canada of course does have a literary tradition, and a well defined national canon, but it rarely reaches the levels of world class stuff or deals in specific with uniquely Canadian conflicts and social tensions. Who wants to read a book about the Halifax Explosion in a book like Barometer Rising? Or about poverty in urban Quebec in The Tin Flute, especially since Americans will have to read it in translation.

If you want to see the greatest literature in the Canadian canon, read a few stories by Alice Munro. You’ll understand why she’s called “our Chekhov”.

Nice digits wasted on a shit post

>(and white/Asian people)
China has plenty of good lit, Indonesia are Asian Muslims which are basically not Asian, and the Philippines has not been an independent state for very long, and the countries that owned it (Spain, America, Japan) all do have literary tradition.

So nothing as I said

why are you disregarding everyone other white/Asian?

Because literary merit is inherently Western and Far Eastern modeled. Black people and Native people can and have wrote good lit, but in reference to Western or Eastern standards. To even be taken seriously, there are some fundamental Western or Eastern literary stipulations to be met, of which developing countries just don’t have.

>Because literary merit is inherently Western and Far Eastern modeled
How did it become like that in the first place?
Unless you bring the reason down to genes, there's really no other way of explaining this.

Colonialism, the fact that globalism is spearheaded by those countries (G7, UN, etc,), and various other factors. I don’t inherently agree with this system, but the fact that we’re posting on an American founded literature board in English about works from those countries just proves my point.

I think it partly has to do with whether or not it has any real tradition or is a real country.

colonialism happened in Asia too

Not to the extent of Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East.

yes canada is horrible, don't come here. We already have too many people coming in

-Lack of powerful publishing houses.
-Shit tier universities
-No strong historical identity to write about other than 'muh immigrants'

canada outside quebec is hell for anyone who need housing and doesn't own a house

Pretty much, yeah

Fuck all of you in your faggot assholes

>safest country, great nature, expensive to live, no true nationalistic tribalism
yes, why are third-worlders and poor people angry at canada?

>for anyone who need housing and doesn't own a house

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well, there was that one time we helped the British burn down the white house

Not really. There are more people in California than in all of Canada.

>China
It would be difficult to produce great fiction in a country where you are liable to get locked up for pissing off the government.

>being influenced by Yea Forums

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I always thought most of Yea Forums would really enjoy The Cunning Man.

I'd be surprised if there were no interesting theology and religious literature from Ehtiopia. They have had their own writing since Antiquity. Of course it isn't going to be well known in the West.

True, and I did try my hardest. But they did produce some great writers so that's something.

You forget that the roots of Western literature lie in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Arabs and Turks had poetry before any of the modern European languages matured.

Leaf here.
Me too.
My country has no soul.
>Existence in Canada has always been a battle against the elements, far more so than in the US.
Most of Canada lives in the cities near the borders, actually.
God no.
Please don't.
It's an absolutely disgusting fucking shithole filled with the most retarded liberal bourgie garbage.

Don't be a faggot, is my only advice on the matter.
>Getting "worried" by a leafy bait thread

What blackpilled you user? I'm usually pretty cozy here. (Moving out of Toronto helped a lot).

I was born and raised in Vancouver AKA soulless chink-scraper offshore tax evasion land.

All complaints about Canada or any given city within it can be reduced to what many anons in this thread have already said: the place lacks a soul. It is an empty vessel, and this soullessness leads to the heavy unbearableness of living here, of the lack of culture. It is draining rather than replenishing, it diminishes the souls of the people living within it.

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South Africa.

why would Yea Forums lie?

China has a world famous literary tradition.
Indonesia and Ethiopia have massive literary traditions. It's just that nobody gives a damn about them besides them.

Everything lord durham say about french canadians apply to Canadians of today

You ever tried reading a book about it? Books.

I trust the Canadian government to be more incompetent in gaining power over its citizens.

I think the main problem with you all is that you live in major cities.
Try living in Halifax Nova Scotia or something.

the maritimes have the only half-decent canadian literature i.e. lisa moore, alistair macleod. other than that the only decent BC authors are sheila watson, lee henderson, and i haven't read any douglas coupland but he seems ok too. leonard cohen seems alright but i haven't read any of his work either. that's basically it though, it's depressing how dismal the state of canadian literature (and film) is.

Clearly

>good life is bad for literature
Still, most good writers come from privilleged classes.

China is really disappointing considering its sheer mass but it doesn't fit the thread because they still have some greats.
Countries like Canada or Korea really are wasteland on this front.

Canada has good poets and good fiction writers.
Also Paddle-to-the-Sea takes place partially in Canada which is pretty cool.
Now fuck off you canuck's cuck, I got work to do.

Based Richler. Honestly, find me a funnier writer.

This is genuinely hilarious. Are you 17? I have to know.

This thread is really funny because, as per usual, Yea Forums exposes just how poorly read and cultured it actually is.

Let's start with the obvious: a big reason you haven't heard of much Canadian literature is because Canadian arts funding is firmly nationalistic and largely fund artists writing specifically about issues of Canadian identity (read: things that people outside of Canada don't give a shit about). Authors like Hugh MacLennan, Mordecai Richler, and Margaret Laurence are writers whose concerns are so excessively Canadian that people outside of Canada probably can't relate to them at all. This isn't by accident by the way -- during the 1940's Canada's Massey Commission determined that a lack of specifically Canadian culture was a bona fide threat to national security (should American culture fully annex Canadian culture, Canadians might begin to identify more with Amerians than with themselves), and so as a result the Canadian government has spend decades heavily funding Canadian culture with the propagandistic intent of maintaining a Canadian identity. Combine that with the fact that Canada has a rather small population and a rather short history and you get the answer to your question.

Canada's best contributions to "world literature" (i.e. work that has a scope beyond defining what "Canadian identity" is) are in its incredible avant-garde poetry tradition. No one on Yea Forums knows about this, because of course no one on Yea Forums knows fuck all about poetry. bpnichol, Erin Mouré, bill bissett, Daphne Marlatt, Christian Bök, Derek Beaulieu, and the early works of Michael Ondaatje (who most people only know because of his novel The English Patient lol) are all worth your time if you're into that sort of thing.

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We Irish weren't conquered we were merely occupied for eight hundred years

Give me one good reason why Canada is a bad country.

Poetry is for fags.

>Canada's best contributions to "world literature" are in its incredible avant-garde poetry tradition
In other words, no worthwhile contribution at all.
>Give me one good reason why Canada is a bad country
Canadians.

>avant garde poetry not a worthwhile contribution to literature

and what do u read m8, John Grisham novels?

>and what do u read m8, John Grisham novels?
Nope, but I’d much rather be condemned to an eternity of airport novels than an eternity of pretentious hipster posturing.

Canadian here - it's a "CanCon" problem.

Canadian content is outrageously terrible and while the CBC is a relatively decent news source, it has a heavy bias toward feel-good multicultural pablum. Its almost as if all Canadian cultural output is designed to make us feel warm fuzzies about immigration.

Heavy handed government means it is hard for Toronto to develop the local particularities which give a city 'character'. For instance, Toronto has a decent food scene thanks to a 50% foreign born population, but sky-high property prices and a ban on food trucks and other workarounds keeps it decidedly worse than comparable cities. Similarly, high property prices and bad transit means interesting cultural products -- which require affordable living for the creative class -- are not possible. Consider Toronto's festivals and other market-based gatherings: a huge proportion of vendors are telecoms and corporate chains.

My impression is having a system to support bad art is worse than no system at all.

If there were no system to support canadian art then artist and finaciers and people interested in canadian art would spontaneously interact and the incentive would be to produce quality, with the expectation of quality slowly building.

Whereas now if you wanted to produce a good film that didn’t compromise you’d go to the financier and they’d say “you have to cut all these edgy interesting parts, or you won’t get a National Film Board grant” whereas otherwise the financier wouldn’t expect you to grovel for a grant and just say “ok we’ll have to make do with a smaller budget”, and that doesn’t even get into stuff that makes almost profitable to produce unpopular crap over semi popular quality. If you produce 5 milquetoast “cancon” films, the establishment will respect you and you’ll maybe get tenure at a small arts college, you say fuck it and produce 5 highly inflammatory independently financed films you’ll never get that prestige, hell they’ll probably try and sabotage you.

With that said, Canadians such as Michael Ondaatje, Leonard Cohen and Margaret Atwood have certainly made a contribution to world literature.

TIL Stéphane Mallarmé is pretentious hipster posturing

This is why no one likes marxists

No serious reader of poetry considers Leonard Cohen's contributions to literature very seriously. He's a notch above Rupi Kaur as far as poetic merit is concerned, basically only appeals to people who don't actually read poetry. Considering that I can barely think of CanLit novels that actually seem to be make us feel "warm fuzzles" about immigration (and have read CanLit pretty widely) I'm going to assume that you don't know what you're talking about.

Your belief that a lack of support for Canadian art would lead to better art is some of the most ridiculous libertarian sophistry I've ever heard. Most "literary" literature is produced via grants, both in Canada and in the United States. The free market produces James Patterson, not James Joyce.

While you're right for the

>now if you wanted to produce a good film that didn’t compromise you’d go to the financier and they’d say “you have to cut all these edgy interesting parts, or you won’t get a National Film Board grant”
Yes, because big budget Hollywood producers are renowned for the creative freedom they allot. Get real.

Yeah user, Get real.

TIL you’re retarded. We were talking about pretentious Canadian hipster “artists,” so why do you bring up some obscure French 19th century poet who has nothing to do with any of it? Are you senile?

>obscure

>While you're right for the

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>obscure
>Mallarmé
LOL holy fuck way to tell on yourself bro

Confirmed for senile.

Confirmed for samefag.

samefag as whomst?

jews dont count

Robertson Davies, Alice Munro and, partially, Malcolm Lowry. Frye, one of the most pre-eminent literary critics of the 20th century. Marshall McLuhan made media studies a scholarly pursuit. Some middle brow poetry scattered amidst the desert that is canlit, and then a few decent to good authors, but I'd say none of superlative talent other than those I've already named.

Toronto's food scene is a damn sight better than "decent" lmfao

kill yourself Canadian fag

>avant-garde poetry
I'm having a hard time imagining something worse than this

>Toronto has a decent food scene thanks to a 50% foreign born population, but sky-high property prices and a ban on food trucks
Really devestating loss, those poor Torontofags arent able to buy roadkill fried in sewer oil from illiterate street shitting foreigners who don't know how to wash their hands. absolute tragedy

>serious reader of poetry
That's like 12 people on earth

My friend who lives in Toronto unironically stopped eating food from any restaurant with Indian servers after he read news reports about how their feces contamination rates are like 5x higher than normal. I think the tipping point for him was when he found out that Indian-owned soda fountains, like the big ones where you push levers to your dispense ice and soda, were contaminated by feces. How does an Indian contaminate a SODA FOUNTAIN with feces?

Nice projection

>why would random people go out of their way to ignore all the positive aspects of something and instead emphasize the negative???
It's like you dont understand how being human works.

Easy. a lot of these people came from a life in a third world country where they werent accountable for how well they clean themselves up after a shit. They eventually move to canada where everything doesnt smell like garbage/shit - yes ive been to india and yes the moment the cabin doors of the plane open the entire country smells terrrrrible - and then they find the easiest job to get, fastfood, and they dont know how to wash their fucking hands.

Their entire identity is basically saying “we’re not like the americans.”

Cold take. "We're different from Americans" reached a breaking point at least ten years ago. I've never met a Canadian who claims we are different from Americans, especially not in cities. American cultural hegemony is absolutely inescapable and it should be no surprise you literally hear Canadians say "we" when referring to the United States, often in regards to foreign policy. Trudeau has explicitly stated as much: "We are a post-national country." He is 100% correct.

what about the first nations and quebec as a nation within canada?

>Derek Beaulieu

He was my English teacher in High School. Surprised anyone actually knows about him here.

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>This thread got me worried
fucking lmao

First Nations? Far as I'm aware they're only unified by political necessity, and even then they usually choose incentives that benefit themselves rather than side with their alliances or federal reps. Nothing particularly national about them. Quebec, sure, I agree, and frankly I'd wish them godspeed if they went independent.

we are more effectual in terms of philosophy--in george grant and marshall mcluhan are our greats.

alice munro is good

read lamant for a nation, this happened a long time ago, the canadian project has been dead since the 50s, we are a raw materials subsidiary for like 8 US corps

red canadian injun here: shut the fuck up whitie

>the Canadian project has been dead since the 50s
>don't believe me? it's all in this book from the 60s

Predictable

cringe

even korea has better literature and film than canada. we are truly philistines

then move to korea, fag

Canada will have some random writers some who you may enjoy... most who are aggressively mediocre. But it isn’t a cohesive ‘literary culture’ because Canada isn’t a cohesive nation. It’s not really a nation at all. It’s a federation, not a nation. Any culture that is somewhat distinct is regional in Canada. Quebec has nothing to do with Newfoundland or Nova Scotia who have very little to do with BC or the prairies.

>In the Skin of a Lion
>The English Patient
Ondaatje is overrated.

Please don’t tell me Quebec, or Newfoundland or Nova Scotia are devoid of history or culture. You must live in Newmarket or Milton chum.

Canada has culture, it’s just not the phoney Liberal, globalist bullshit that’s foisted on us by our elites. We have cultures that are rooted in history and are authentic, but for some reason our leadership class wants to snuff this out and replace it with a plastic ‘new’ culture.

You must come from Mississauga dude. I’m happy with my culture.

Very, very cold winters though.

That shit sucks. Check out his "Complete Works of Billy the Kid"

...and America is a comparatively cohesive nation?

you'e the fag bud, not me

go get me a slurpie from 7/11 cousin

Honos alit artes desu

Korea priduces a lot of legit kino movies. Dunno about their literature though.

As a French who has only met awesome culturel Québécois this thread makes me a little sad. Is the country really all that bad? I know Yea Forums likes to talk shit but in 100 posts you generally find quite a few well argued positive ones.

Nah, those are genuinely great novels.

kim young-ha is pretty good. also byung-chul han but idk if he's considered korean or german, since he lives in germany and writes in german.