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Bearers of RiskWriting Masculinity in Contemporary English-Canadian Short Story Cycles |
eBook Available
How Whiteness and normative masculinity are strategically centred via a marginal genre.
The short story and the short story cycle have long been considered a marginal genre, free to make room for fresh or risk-taking voices. But in thematizing masculinity in crisis, the genre uses the premise of the marginal to elevate recuperative masculinity politics and nostalgia for traditional patriarchy.
Despite the scholarly tendency to link marginal genres and marginalized voices, features of the CanLit infrastructure - including genre criticism and literary prize culture - are complicit in normalizing hegemonic masculinity and the Settler colonial project. Bearers of Risk examines how male Canadian writers mobilize the early twenty-first-century short story cycle as an illustration of post-9/11 recuperative masculinity politics, exposing the tendency to position White, heteronormative men’s viewpoints as objective. Neta Gordon introduces the civil bearer of risk, a figure who comprehends the position of men as being marked by or for failure, and who reasserts masculine authority as civil duty towards community. This book looks at contemporary experimental short story cycles, debut cycles by ethnically minoritized and immigrant writers, and cycles unified by setting, whether suburban, urban, or rural.
Bearers of Risk unsettles popular notions of the inherent outsider status of the short story cycle while also scrutinizing expressions of recuperative masculinity politics through which men assert their right to reclaim the centre.
Despite the scholarly tendency to link marginal genres and marginalized voices, features of the CanLit infrastructure - including genre criticism and literary prize culture - are complicit in normalizing hegemonic masculinity and the Settler colonial project. Bearers of Risk examines how male Canadian writers mobilize the early twenty-first-century short story cycle as an illustration of post-9/11 recuperative masculinity politics, exposing the tendency to position White, heteronormative men’s viewpoints as objective. Neta Gordon introduces the civil bearer of risk, a figure who comprehends the position of men as being marked by or for failure, and who reasserts masculine authority as civil duty towards community. This book looks at contemporary experimental short story cycles, debut cycles by ethnically minoritized and immigrant writers, and cycles unified by setting, whether suburban, urban, or rural.
Bearers of Risk unsettles popular notions of the inherent outsider status of the short story cycle while also scrutinizing expressions of recuperative masculinity politics through which men assert their right to reclaim the centre.
Details
272 Pages, 6 x 9
ISBN 9780228011668
April 2022
Formats: Cloth, Paperback, eBook
Neta Gordon is professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Brock University.
Acknowledgments ix
1 Determining Borders: John Gould’s “Conversion” and the Frameworks for Analysis 3
Section One Experimenting with Form 27
2 Failing and Falling Men: John Gould’s kilter: 55 fictions,the Microfiction, and False Heterogeneities 30
3 Tales of Discovery: Formal Constraints and the Desire for Originality in Paul Glennon’s The Dodecahedron 45
4 “The Perfect Shade of Visitor”: Stephen Marche’s Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, Literary Parody, and the Unmarked Anthologist 62
Section Two Narratives of Arrival 81
5 “The Toughest Kid in Hebrew School”: Suburbia and Whitening in David Bezmozgis’s Natasha and Other Stories 84
6 Contagion and Containment: Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures and Expert Systems in the Cosmopolis 104
7 New Canadians: Anthony De Sa’s Barnacle Love, Ethnic Enclaves, and Civility 123
Section Three Negotiating Space 145
8 The Wounded White Man: Bodies and/as Machines in Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting 148
9 In the Background: Labour and Local Economies in Michael Christie’s The Beggar’s Garden 166
10 “Don’t Write Cheques Your Body Can’t Cash”: D.W. Wilson’s Once Your Break a Knuckle, Rurality, and Authenticity 183
Conclusion: Risk Assessments 202
Appendix I: Short Story Collections and Awards 215
Appendix II: Tables of Contents 221
Notes 227
References 237
Index 253
1 Determining Borders: John Gould’s “Conversion” and the Frameworks for Analysis 3
Section One Experimenting with Form 27
2 Failing and Falling Men: John Gould’s kilter: 55 fictions,the Microfiction, and False Heterogeneities 30
3 Tales of Discovery: Formal Constraints and the Desire for Originality in Paul Glennon’s The Dodecahedron 45
4 “The Perfect Shade of Visitor”: Stephen Marche’s Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, Literary Parody, and the Unmarked Anthologist 62
Section Two Narratives of Arrival 81
5 “The Toughest Kid in Hebrew School”: Suburbia and Whitening in David Bezmozgis’s Natasha and Other Stories 84
6 Contagion and Containment: Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures and Expert Systems in the Cosmopolis 104
7 New Canadians: Anthony De Sa’s Barnacle Love, Ethnic Enclaves, and Civility 123
Section Three Negotiating Space 145
8 The Wounded White Man: Bodies and/as Machines in Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting 148
9 In the Background: Labour and Local Economies in Michael Christie’s The Beggar’s Garden 166
10 “Don’t Write Cheques Your Body Can’t Cash”: D.W. Wilson’s Once Your Break a Knuckle, Rurality, and Authenticity 183
Conclusion: Risk Assessments 202
Appendix I: Short Story Collections and Awards 215
Appendix II: Tables of Contents 221
Notes 227
References 237
Index 253
