PRINT SOURCE: Thomas Raddall Fonds, Correspondence. From Thomas Raddall to Marleen Hayes, 12 March 1958. MS-2-202 42.3.
Subject HeadingsT. H. Raddall gives detailed and thoughtful answers to questions posed by a Carleton University journalism student about the market response to his work in Canada and abroad, if there is the need for Canadian literature to have distinctly Canadian qualities, his views on the merits of the Canada Council and their proposed programme to give financial aid to Canadian writers, and what he feels is the greatest hindrance to Canadian writers.
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March 12, 1958 Dear Miss Hayes, Canadians are not a book-buying people in the European or even the American sense. There are Canadian cities of more than 100,000 people that do not support a single shop devoted to the display and sale of books. I believe there are less than two dozen such shops in the whole country. Most Canadian book-buying is done through the mail-order book clubs; the rest depends on a few shelves in a stationery or department store, and the racks of "paper- backs" to be found in drug stores and so on. The number of Canadians willing to make their way to a book-shop, select a book, and pay the full retail price for it, is so small that it is difficult to say how receptive Canadians are to Canadian authors in particular. I should say they are receptive to native authors only on a regional basis. It is common for a French- Canadian novel to sell 10,000 copies in the province of Quebec. A Canadian writing in English nowadays is lucky to sell that many, over the shop counter, in the whole of English-speaking Canada. In book-shop sales, within Canada, my own books have found their most receptive public in the Maritime Provinces, and in Ontario, which is the one province having something like a national outlook. I doubt if my books would have been popular anywhere outside the Maritimes if it had not been for the fact that they were published -- and publicized -- in New York, London and else- where. It is a cliche but quite true that Canadians are indifferent to a native author unless he has achieved some notice abroad -- excepting always the French- Canadians, who live in a literary world of their own. I have been fortunate in that most of my novels have been adopted by book clubs in the United States and to some extent in Britain. In each case, after the usual interval, my regular publishers also sold publication rights to the "paper-back" trade. (My histories, and my books of short stories, interested neither the clubs nor the "paper-backs".) At the end of 1957 the total sale of my books in all countries (perhaps I should say, more strictly, in nine languages) since the first appeared in 1939, was as follows:- Copies Cloth covers 865,573 Paper covers 782,707 1,648,280It is difficult to trace exactly the distribution of American book club editions in Canada; but as far as I can do so, and adding the book-shop sales, the Canadian sales of all my books at the end of 1957 was as follows:- Copies Cloth covers 165,049 Paper covers 101,691 266,740These figures seem to show that Canadians have been receptive to my work. Bear in mind, however, that most of the cloth covers were bought through book clubs, on the recommendation of the club editors, and at a price far below the retail price in a book-shop; and one may question the discrimination of the casual buyer of paper-backs in a railway station or drug store. The number of people who bought my books in cloth covers at the full book-shop price was comparatively small. The top sale of any one of my novels, cloth-covered, in Canadian book-shops was about 15,000. The lowest was about half that. Of course book club members don't have to buy the editors' selection if they don't want it; and undoubtedly many buyers of paper-backs are thrifty folk who wait until the books they want appear in these cheap editions. Also the scarcity of book shops in Canada obliges many people to buy from mail-order clubs or the drug store racks. Anyhow, I offer these figures as the summary of my own experience in Canadian book buying, and you may draw your own conclusions. You ask, "Is there, and should there be, anything distinctive about the work of authors raised in Canada?" That depends on the individual author's outlook and choice of material. Canadian author Lionel Shapiro1 has spent most of his life abroad and his books (which have sold in enormous quantities) have nothing to do with Canada. A few years ago he wrote a bitter article in a Canadian magazine, complaining that he had received no Canadian recognition, blaming the Canadian Authors' Association (which finances the Governor General's Awards) and suggest- ing that the C.A.A. were jealous of his own success in foreign fields.2 I question his taste in airing his complaint in this fashion, and in accepting a G.G. Award soon afterwards; but his main point was right. A Canadian writers is not less a Canadian because he lives abroad and writes about other matters and people. However, if we are ever to have a truly Canadian literature, there must be a healthy proportion of Canadian writers who stay at home and write about their own scene and the people in it. That was my own decision when I began to write thirty years ago and I have stuck to it. With the exception of a recent volume of Canadian history I have written entirely about Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotians. In the days when I was writing exclusively for British and then American magazines I always made clear that the scene of the story was Nova Scotia and that the characters were Nova Scotians; and I insisted that every story be printed as I wrote it. Part of this attitude was practical, for naturally I could write best about the places and people I knew. But no small part was my desire to tell the world something of the story of the Bluenoses,3 past and present, and their rugged habitat. No one had attempted that since Haliburton,4 and I thought it was time someone did. You ask my opinion of the Canada Council5 and the proposed financial aid to Canadian writers. I think it a good thing if properly done. I came up the hard way myself, and so have a good many others. But coming up the hard way meant that I had to spend years at other occupations, earning a living for a wife and family in the tough years between the wars, and writing only in my scant spare time. I had reached the age of thirty-five before I was able to take the plunge as a full time author. An annual grant of money (such as Britain's Civil List6 has long provided to writers of promise) would have enabled me to devote myself to writing ten years earlier -- and there is no time like youth for the abundance of ideas, for fresh and keen impressions, and for the tackling of themes that seem impossible in the wary and more cynical years. Finally, you ask what is the greatest hindrance to a writer in this country. I know only one -- that his home market is too small or indifferent to support his efforts. This forces him to the markets of the United States and Britain, where he must compete with a host of able and well established writers in their native field. The prospect is discouraging and so is the experience of the first few years. But it is a challenge, too, especially if he refuses to give up his identity as a Canadian and insists on writing about his own land and people. I have found it stimulating. Sincerely, Miss Marleen Hayes |
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