BARRY CALLAGHAN
man of letters
Barry Callaghan - Essays on His Works
Edited by Priscila Uppal, Guernica Editions, 2005
A great storyteller, Barry Callaghan is one of the most distinctive man of letters Canada has ever produced. He is fascinated by the no-man’s land that stands between fiction and journalism. Politically and culturally engaged, he is a public scholar and acute critic in the tradition of Edmund Wilson. Barry Callaghan’s fiction and poetry have been translated into seven languages. Among the contributors are Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, Marie-Claire Blais, William Kennedy, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Dennis Lee, Hayden Carruth, Patrick Lane, Seán Virgo, Robert Marteau, James Hart, David Lampe, Joe Rosenblatt, Leon Rooke, Brunella Antomarini, John Montague, Ray Robertson, Ray Ellenwood, Kathleen McCracken, Michel Deguy, Branko Gorjup, Michael Keefer, Rosemary Sullivan, David Sobelman and Gale Zoë Garnett.
About the Editor
Priscila Uppal is a professor of humanities and coordinator of the creative writing program at York University, and the author of Confessions of a Fertility Expert and The Divine Economy of Salvation. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.
CONTENTS
Introduction: Up, Up, and Away with Barry Callaghan: An Introduction to Essays on His Works PRISCILA UPPAL
Chronology
Published Works
THE POETRY
Hogg The Poems and Drawings
and Hogg The Seven Last Words
Homage to Hogg ................................................................................................................................................................ MICHEL DEGUY
Barry in the Underworld .................................................................................................................................................... MARGARET ATWOOD
The Hogg Poems and Drawings ........................................................................................................................................ ADELE FREEDMAN
Hogg in the Holy Land ....................................................................................................................................................... SUSAN BECKMAN
Twice Born Hogg ............................................................................................................................................................... BRANKO GORJUP
Stone Yearning to be Water: Hogg’s Philosophical Realism for the XXI Century ........................................................... BRUNELLA ANTOMARINI
some notes on callaghan’s hogg poems and drawings ....................................................................................................... RAY ELLENWOOD
Three Meditations on Hogg ................................................................................................................................................ JOE ROSENBLATT
Barry Callaghan’s “Sisyphus the Crack King” ................................................................................................................... JIM HART
Hogg’s Roman Nose: Callaghan’s Sardonic Sonnet ........................................................................................................... DAVID LAMPE
What the Darkness Tells the Light: Barry Callaghan’s “Judas Priest” ............................................................................... BRUCE MEYER
The Hidden Precinct of Desire: Barry Callaghan’s Hogg Works ....................................................................................... VERA FRENKEL
The Whole Hogg ................................................................................................................................................................. MICHAEL BELL
Hogg: Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................. HAYDEN CARRUTH
Callaghan Powerful ............................................................................................................................................................. GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE
Fishing for Hogg in the Midnight Sun ................................................................................................................................ DAVID SOBELMAN
Margaritas Ante Porcos ....................................................................................................................................................... ROBERT MARTEAU
The Seven Last Words ......................................................................................................................................................... DAVID WEVILL
A Slaviceltic Circus Poet ...................................................................................................................................................... GALE ZOE GARNETT
Against Forgetting: Notes on Barry Callaghan’s Hogg The Seven Last Words ................................................................... JANICE KULYK KEEFER
THE FICTION
The Black Queen Stories,
The Way the Angel Spreads Her Wings,
When Things Get Worst,
and A Kiss Is Still a Kiss
Barry’s Lament .................................................................................................................................................... DOUGLAS (DOUGIE) RICHARDSON
The Black Queen Stories ...................................................................................................................................................... TIMOTHY FINDLEY
The Short Story as Miniature: Barry Callaghan’s “The Black Queen” ................................................................................ MICHAEL TRUSSLER
Two Jews’ Blues ................................................................................................................................................................... NORMAN SNIDER
Fulfilled Expectations ............................................................................................................................................................ PAUL WILLIAM ROBERTS
Complexity, Circularity, and Distanciation: Notes Toward a Reading of The Way the Angel Spreads Her Wings ............. ALEF GRAF VAN STEIJN
When Things Get Worst ......................................................................................................................................................... KATHLEEN MCCRACKEN
“when one part beginneth and the other singeth the same” re-reading When Things Get Worst .......................................... SEAN VIRGO
A Complex Beauty ................................................................................................................................................................. JOAN THOMAS
Never’s Just the Echo of Forever ........................................................................................................................................... LEON ROOKE
The Art of Disaster: Notes on Barry Callaghan’s “Because Y is a Crooked Letter” ............................................................. ROSEMARY SULLIVAN
Orpheus in Retirement: Love, Myth, and Questions of Audience in Barry Callaghan’s “Nobody Wants to Die” ............... PRISCILA UPPAL
THE NON-FICTION
Barrelhouse Kings,
Raise You Five,
and Raise You Ten
Homage ................................................................................................................................................................................. JOHN MONTAGUE
A Few Words About Barrelhouse Kings .............................................................................................................................. ANNE MICHAELS
A Son’s Lament .................................................................................................................................................................... PAUL WILLIAM ROBERTS
“The Truth Was Always in the Telling”: Storytelling in Barrelhouse Kings ....................................................................... DENNIS LEE
Barrelhouse Kings: Something Barry Callaghan Left Out of His Memoir .......................................................................... BILL CASSELMAN
Just What We Needed: A Critic with “Duende” .................................................................................................................. MICHAEL KEEFER
Raise You Five: Essays and Encounters 1964-2004: Volume One ....................................................................................... RAY ROBERTSON
Raise You Five and Raise You Ten ......................................................................................................................................... DIANA KUPREL
My Old Friend, the Literary Journalist ................................................................................................................................... DAVID SOBELMAN
CONTRIBUTION TO THE ARTS
The Man,
The Publisher,
The Mentor,
The Translator,
The Teacher,
The Archive
For Barry Callaghan .............................................................................................................................................................. PATRICK LANE
Barry Callaghan ..................................................................................................................................................................... MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS
The Thinking Heart: Barry Callaghan’s Exile ...................................................................................................................... ALEXANDRE AMPRIMOZ
The Big Man ......................................................................................................................................................................... LAUREN B. DAVIS
Barry Callaghan, Translation, Exile ...................................................................................................................................... RAY ELLENWOOD
Barry Callaghan and the Invention of Cultural Studies ........................................................................................................ MICHAEL KEEFER
Two-Storey Town: A Song for Barry Callaghan .................................................................................................................. JON BROOKS
As Thoroughly as Possible: Barry Callaghan’s Papers ......................................................................................................... CHRISTOPHER DODA
CODA
Interview: Barry Callaghan with William Kennedy, Saratoga Race Track: August 2004
Appendix A: Four Hogg Drawings
Appendix B: Translation in Exile
Contributors
