The Best Canadian Novels To Jerk Off To (or; The Best Canadian Novels To Which To Jerk Off)

Canadian fiction's been called many things, but nothing that Ethel Wilson never heard before. I was once told by a friend that a piece of Chilean bass was "as dry as an Atwoodian blow job." Another friend then said that the only way really to prevent forest fires was to keep Atwood away from popsicle sticks, pine needles, and provincial parks. Then I said, "If you really want to make a joke about Atwood starting a fire by sucking a piece of wood, why don't you just tell the story of Jane Rule's false cock and her scorched Penman's long underwear?" That ended the conversation.

As an academic, I deal largely with esoteric issues--like Morley Callaghan's vision of the city, or Douglas Coupland's vision of the future, or Margaret Laurence's vision of the past. Simple stuff; not very interesting. This year my department's hosting a conference on the question mark: Postmodern? Modern? Pre-Modern? The idea's simple, general, and has the potential to draw in a lot of fully-funded researchers. It's amazing how easy it is to sucker people with these weighty conference topics. One year we did "Cold." That was it, Cold. Another time it was "The Imaginary Farmer's Feel-ed: the writer and the emotional urban farm." Weird shit, and none too interesting.

But no one'll play my game. I wanted to do: the best novels to jerk off to. "Too controversial," they said. "Academics don't masturbate." I was pissed off, but I'm used to the Ivory Tower's take on non-standard paths. And everyone knows that academics do masturbate. Many in their university offices; some female ones using thick university chalk and, strangely enough, those long, thin pointers. Back to SSHRC nonsense: somehow it's great to hand out a hundred grand to get a paper or--even better--a thesis on Canadian immigrant fiction and its Polish antecedents, but the second you imply that Lisa Moore's at her best when she's giving you a hard on, that's it. It's over. You're teaching a course on grammar, and Moore's writing more date-rape ballads.

As an aside, I wonder if, as a writer, you ever get to a point where it's just not that fulfilling to type about truck stop rapes and stranger rapes and assorted childhood fondlings and questionable spankings. I guess not. Not to make any substantive comparisons, but here you've got East of Eden, and there you've got sixty-five character sketches of a tortured female id. Wouldn't it be nice to break out and write something about, I don't know, finding a treasure map and some lost pirate gold? But the Giller committee would hate that.

So I'm counting down the best Canadian novels to jerk off to. If the university won't do it, I will. I'll start with David Chariandy's Soucouyant, and work my way down to Norman Levine's Canada Made Me. It'll be an interesting literary voyage.