These two slim biographies, Margaret MacMillan’s Stephen Leacock and M.G. Vassanji’s Mordecai Richler, are part of the Extraordinary Canadians series launched by John Ralston Saul, a series about notable Canadians such as Lester B. Pearson, Emily Carr, Pierre Elliott Trudeau and others.
What the series is actually for is a little puzzling, for there are, in most cases, more detailed biographies available. The two biographies under consideration here are something like introductions to the subjects and their works, the kind of books useful to students writing essays in high school or college. They are neither detailed enough for hardcore scholars nor scintillating enough for readers accustomed to biographies without borders.
Modern biographies are not usually so circumspect. I was recently reading a short biography of Martin Amis in the United Kingdom’s version of Coles Notes. Amis was described as abandoning one lover at a party to have...
Antanas Sileika’s 2004 novel, Woman in Bronze (Random House), was set in jazz-era Paris. His most recent novel, Underground, was released by Thomas Allen in 2011. He is the director of the Humber School for Writers.
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