Writing Life: Celebrated Canadian and International Authors on Writing and Life

Fifty writers write about some aspect of their experience as writers. Most of the writers are unknown , at least outside of Canada. A few are world- stars and naturally the reader pays a bit more attention to them. In fact one of them Marilynne Robinson in writing of her awakening of herself as reader, of the soul- transforming character of Literature strikes what for me was the strongest note of the anthology. Another even more celebrated Alice Munro surprises by her reporting on retirement from writing because the ordinary disturbances of life, including fan phone- calls have at this point in her life, become too much for her. Yann Martel writes in an intelligent and understandable way about the difficulties he has in a project he at the time was working on, a project about the Holocaust. Howard Engel who I had not heard of before writes about his experience of a stroke, and how it left him unable to read and still able to write. Michael Helm writes the most philosophical essay on 'Writing and the World Replaced'. The volume has pictures of each of the writers and brief biographies of each one of them. In truth I did not find the great share of what was written here very exciting informative or compelling. On the whole I did not find writers writing as if it were something they felt they had to do . But perhaps this criticism is unfair and simply my expecting of others what I have experienced myself. There is of course much more in this book than I have mentioned in this review.