Vassanji, M.G. The Book of secrets

”By Canadian literature,” wrote critic E.K. Brown in the opening chapter of his seminal book On Canadian Poetry (1943), “I shall understand writing by those who having been born in Canada passed a considerable number of their best creative years in this country, and also writing by those who, wherever they may have been born, once arrived in Canada did important creative work and led much of their literary life among us.” Clearly comfortable with the “element of indefiniteness” at the heart of his definition, a presence that many of his contemporaries were determined to schematize, Brown also articulates in this denotation a certain critical impatience with Canada’s apparent obsession withwhat Northrop Frye identified as the great riddle troubling Canadian sensibility, namely “Where is here?” ”By Canadian literature,” wrote critic E.K. Brown in the opening chapter of his seminal book On Canadian Poetry (1943), “I shall understand writing by those who having been born in Canada passed a considerable number of their best creative years in this country, and also writing by those who, wherever they may have been born, once arrived in Canada did important creative work and led much of their literary life among us.” Clearly comfortable with the “element of indefiniteness” at the heart of his definition, a presence that many of his contemporaries were determined to schematize, Brown also articulates in this denotation a certain critical impatience with Canada’s apparent obsession withwhat Northrop Frye identified as the great riddle troubling Canadian sensibility, namely “Where is here?”