“This is a much be-trumpeted novel by a new Canadian writer who takes himself very seriously. I began to read it from interest — and forced myself to finish it because it was a gift. It was the deadliest dull thing I ever tried to read. Callaghan’s idea of ‘Literature’ seems to be to photograph a latrine or pigsty meticulously and have nothing else in the picture.
We have a latrine in our backyard. I see it before a garden of color — over it a blue sky — behind it a velvety pine. These things are as ‘real’ as the latrine.
Callaghan sees nothing but the latrine and insists blatantly that you see nothing else also. If you insist on seeing sky and river and pine, you are a ‘sentimentalist’.
Callaghan is no newly risen star. He is not even a meteor. He is merely a Roman candle shooting up sparkously, and then sputtering out into darkness.”
— L.M. Montgomery
This is the second quote that reminds me of Ayn Rand. It’s likely that Rand and Montgomery would’ve detested each other, for being respectively heartless and sentimental, but this excerpt and the one praising Les Miserables (Hugo was Rand’s favorite novelist) suggest that the two women shared certain artistic preferences. Very interesting.
LMM was no sucker, definitely. I wish she had commented on more things, because I do wonder what she thought. About James Joyce, for example.