Description: "For more than five decades, John Metcalf has worked tirelessly as editor, anthologist, writer, critic, and teacher to help shape our understanding of Canadian literature and imagine its potential. A long-time editor of the Best Canadian Stories anthology; fiction editor at some of the preeminent literary presses in the country for more than forty years; and past editor of Canadian Notes and Queries, Canadas longest-running independent journal of literary criticism, Metcalf has worked tirelessly to support generations of our best writers. In Temerity & Gall, Metcalf looks back on a lifetime spent in letters; surveys, with no punches pulled, the current state of CanLit; and offers a passionate defense of the promise and potential of Canadian writing."--
Brief description:
John Metcalf has been one of the leading editors in Canada for more than five decades, editing more than two hundred books over this time, including eighteen volumes of the Best Canadian Stories anthology. He is also the author of more than a dozen works of fiction and nonfiction, including Finding Again the World: Selected Stories, Vital Signs: Collected Novellas, An Aesthetic Underground: A Literary Memoir, and The Museum at the End of the World. Senior Fiction Editor at Biblioasis, he lives in Ottawa with his wife, Myrna.
Review Quotes:
Praise for Temerity & Gall
"Incandescent [...] steeped in acid wit."
--Literary Review of Canada
"[Metcalf's] exacting eye and his ongoing willingness to call out what he considers substandard, inert, or deadening in our literary culture has earned him opprobrium ... One need not agree with everything [he] says to find much to gnaw on in his analyses of the various ways literary technique and style ... are too often downgraded or outright ignored. ... While it's amusing to wrestle with the temerity and gall of Metcalf's settled esthetic standards ... his achievement in translating this approach into practice as mentor and guiding light is invaluable and we are all in his debt."
--Steven W. Beattie, Toronto Star
"[Metcalf] deliver[s] a layered and textured narrative highlighting a wide range of writing and writers, one that immerses the reader into the soul of what writing, and thus literature, is supposed to be. And in this, he has succeeded."
--Ottawa Review of Books
"Temerity & Gall is obviously a must-have for book lovers but, since it presents Metcalf's energetic meandering from a re-union of the Montreal Story Tellers through colourful observations and unabashed opinions, it can be enjoyed by anyone seeking stimulation of the mind."
--Winnipeg Free Press
Praise for John Metcalf
"John Metcalf has written some of the very best stories ever published in this country."
--Alice Munro
"[Metcalf's] talent is generous, hectoring, huge, and remarkable."
--Washington Post
"In the past few decades, Canada has won a reputation as a prolific producer of high-quality short stories. Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant and John Metcalf are among those who have proven themselves masters of the difficult form."
--Maclean's
"Hilarious, touching and delightful ... brilliant concision and understated humor."
--Los Angeles Times
"A master stylist confidently at work in his favoured form."
--Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature: Second Edition
"Masterful ... Harsh reality, hope, and caricature mingle in this tour de force. As Metcalf says in his previous book, "Writing is very hard work but at the same time it is delightful play." An exceptional collection."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)