On Leacock: Quotations

Donald Cameron

[Arcadian Adventures] is hilarious; its wit is mordant and electric, its comic invention rich and original, its economy unparalleled in Leacock's work. (Faces of Leacock. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1967. p. 104)

What is the difference between appearance and reality? Here is a book [Sunshine Sketches] in which appearances are constantly turning into realities, and realities becoming appearances. How may an individual, limited as his vision must be, tell the difference between them? What is truth? said jesting Leacock, and could not supply an answer. (Ibid., p. 136)

Ralph Curry

Stephen Leacock represented in a way the paradox which is Canada. Born in England, he moved to Canada and wrote American humor. But this was the simplest of the inconsistencies that his life and personality presented. He was the untidy man with the orderly mind, the man who could not drive a car but who could explain the theory of relativity. These are true paradoxes, however, because they only seem to represent incongruities. At the source, Leacock was a humanist in the broadest sense: his study and his interest was humanity, not facts and figures. The man was at the same time lecturer, teacher, economist, scholar, political scientist, humorist, historian, and bon vivant. Everything he wrote and everything he did was based upon a recognition of human dignity. (Stephen Leacock: Humorist and Humanist. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1959. p. 7)

Robertson Davies

It may have been this tension between intellect and emotion, theory and experience, that made him a humorist. Tension must find its outlet somehow. In mediocre people, it may simply cause ill-temper, but a man of Leacock's powers would have had to become either a fanatic, crushing emotion in the service of theory, or a humorist, accepting the contradicitons of his temperament without trying too strenuously to reconcile them. (Stephen Leacock. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1970. p. 14)

The slapstick for him everytime-never the rapier. (Ibid., p. 23)

In matters of narrative he was a sprinter, not a miler. (Ibid., p. 33)

At his best Leacock makes us laugh, but tells us nothing about what we are laughing at, as the great parodist does. At his worst he succumbs to a kind of aggressive lowbrowism-in his day it was sometimes called the Mucker Pose-and we meet with a lot of this in a book of 1923, Over the Footlights. (Ibid., pp. 40-1)

Timothy Findley

God bless Stephen Leacock. I write that from the heart. With his stories and his books, his people and his insights, he has left a legacy for everyone who reads and-I must add-for everyone who writes. It well may be, indeed, that Stephen Butler Leacock is the grandfather of us all. (Stephen Leacock: A Reappraisal. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1986. p. 9)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The two stories I wrote "Jemina, a story of the Blue Ridge Mountains, by John Phlox, Jr." and "The Usual Thing by Robert W. Shamless" are of the "Leacock school" of humour-in fact Jemina is rather a steal in places from "Hannah of the Highlands". (Letter to Leacock; published in Ralph Curry's Stephen Leacock: Humorist and Humanist. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959. p. 119; document housed at the Leacock Memorial Home and Museum Archives)

Northrop Frye

We often find too, as in Leacock, a spirit of criticism, even of satire, that is the complementary half of a strong attachment to the mores that provoke the satire. That is, a good deal of what goes on in Mariposa may look ridiculous, but the norms or standards against which it looks ridiculous are provided by Mariposa itself. (Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. Concord, Ont.: Anansi, 1971. p. 239)

John Lane

The Canadian Mark Twain. (John Lane's advertisment slogan. John Lane was Leacock's London publisher.)

David M. Legate

Neither an originator nor an innovator, Leacock was, rather, an acute observer of the passing scene, and especially of character. He looked about him, kept abreast of the news of the day, recorded what he saw and heard and then molded it as he saw fit. (Stephen Leacock: A Biography. Toronto: Macmillan Company, 1970. p. 62)

The man whose highest art was not to amuse, or to teach in the ordinary sense of the word, but whose great historical sense and earthly humanity were employed to awaken the natural curiosity of young minds and to propel them into channels of independent thought. (Ibid., p. 249)

Gerald Lynch

Whereas the comic impulse had most frequently been analyzed in terms of a closed fist, Leacock intends to present humour as an open hand, a hand which is weaponless and ready to clasp. Whereas laughter had come to be discussed in terms of bared fangs, Leacock understands it in terms of the compassionate smile of acknowledged folly and of humanity. (Stephen Leacock: Humour and Humanity. Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988. p. 28)

Mariposa is not an idyllic town, but it allows for the existence of idyllic love. (Ibid., p. 110)

Desmond Pacey

Leacock came much closer to greatness than any other Canadian writer of his generation,and in Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town the [early Twentieth century] found its chief literary justification. (Creative Writing in Canada. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1967. p. 118)

Malcolm Ross

Leacock is not a novelist. Not, I suggest, a satirist either. Because he loves what he hates. And he is noted bribed into loving what he hates (whether it be small-town political skullduggery or piratical big business). He just can't help it. To attack and defend, to love and hate in one breath, is not the genius of satire but the genius of irony, the subtler art, the deeper wisdom. Nor is irony a less moral art than satire. The satirist must always hate better than he loves. The ironist cannot. Leacock never could. (Introduction to Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Limited, 1960. p. xi)

Clara Thomas

Leacock played the enchanter when he wrote Sunshine Sketches. He stopped time; he placed his readers comfortably in the armchairs of the Mausoleum Club and he miniaturized Mariposa for his viewers, as he reminds us at the end. (Stephen Leacock: A Reappraisal. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1986. p. 101)

Guy Vanderhaeghe

No one who wants to understand our literature or our nation can disregard or dismiss Leacock. It seems to me that Leacock is central to an appreciation of both our literature and our nation. His prominent position in Canadian letters could be assured on any number of grounds. His virtues as a stylist alone would cause him to be remembered. No other Canadian has written such elegant, lucid, yet intimate prose. But Leacock is a great deal more than a stylist. He is one of the great interpreters of this country. (Stephen Leacock: A Reappraisal. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1986. p. 17)

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