canadian ~ twenty-first century literature since 1999


Editorial: Fiction issue #20

by Michael Bryson

September 2, 2007

It is Sunday night. The house is quiet. The cat has stopped howling to go out. Nine days ago, I was married. My wife is outside reading the newspaper. Her children, seven and three years of age, are with their father. The house is quiet.

It has been one of those summers. One that will be remembered for a long time. Like those summers of childhood, which seemed to stretch forever. This summer did not stretch forever, but it was rich with events, dense with planning, full of hope and anxiety, love and stress. Like one of those teenage summers, when change seems perpetual and life full of sharp edges, providing both pain and insight, knowledge and something that we believed resembled truth.

As we age, of course, we realize how rare those summers are, how special those moments. Recreating, reimagining those moments is part of the gift literature gives to us. We enter the special moments of the lives of others. We are reawakened to possibilities of spirit. We are connected to mysteries of emotion and our deepest selves.

The other thing that has been happening this summer is my wife introduced me (through the Internet) to a four-year-old boy she knows. He has been battling cancer, and only a few short months ago seemed to be approaching death at an alarming speed. In recent weeks, he has made a remarkable recovery and now seems to reapproaching his old life. It has been a shocking journey to witness from afar. In particular, it was been a stark reminder of the day-to-day nature of existence: each moment containing the elements of eternity and each day strung together into an odd-shaped continuum. 

These are the building blocks of narrative, which we are all familiar with. These are the tools of writers. One thing follows another, or else it doesn't. Cause, effect, disruption. Characters bounce off each other like pool balls. Children push their way into the future, because where else is there to go?

The stories in this issue address these issues, as all good stories do. They are puzzling and surprising, funny and curious. 

They are:

What?
by John Lowry

Scimitar
by Alexandra Leggat

The Faces of Rock
by Daniel Wilcox

To Boil An Egg
by Stephanie Yorke

I hope that these stories remind you, in some small way, of a special summer.

Michael Bryson is the editor of TDR.   

 

 

 

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TDR is produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 

All content is copyright of the person who created it and cannot be copied, printed, or downloaded without the consent of that person. 

See the masthead for editorial information. 

All views expressed are those of the writer only. 

TDR is archived with the Library and Archives Canada

ISSN 1494-6114. 

 

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Arts du Canada.