Shut Up He Explained by John Metcalf

Maybe it's cheating a little to link to a review that I assigned to myself, but since I've got some other troublesome and time-consuming fish to fry at the moment, here's my review of John Metcalf's latest literary jeremiad.

I got some grief from Dan Wells at Biblioasis about this one, so let me be clear that most of what drives this review is disappointment with someone who has done so much good for Canadian writing, but falls so far short of his vociferously professed ideals in his own.

[I should add, in the interest of warding off bad karma, that I am fully aware that many people may be saying something similar about me – without the positive part – in a few months, once the book on the right hits the killing floor.]