Critical Un-favourite

John Metcalf’s name was once at the top of Canada’s literary blacklist. In 1989 Metcalf and another writer, Leon Rooke, co-edited The Second Macmillan Anthology. The collection included a section called “Position Papers,” in which writers outlined their aesthetic principles. The section had been Rooke’s idea, and in the introduction he divulged that more than one writer he approached had turned him down, “out of firm disagreement with John Metcalf for his variety of stands on assorted issues related to art and society.” Metcalf felt betrayed by Rooke’s disclosure and the two writers were temporarily estranged. Writing about the affair in his memoirs, however, Metcalf acknowledged that the ill will directed against him was real. “I did not doubt that what Leon was reporting was accurate. As [Leon’s wife] Connie Rooke said to me about this time, ‘You have no idea how many enemies you’ve got out there.’” The enmity once directed at Metcalf is worth revisiting, not...