“Labyrinths of Voice: Conversations with Robert Kroetsch” Edited by Shirley Neuman and Robert Wilson

There is no end of things in the heart. What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking.
Ezra Pound

A voice! A voice! It rang deep to the very last.
Joseph Conrad

Ezra Pound wasn’t thinking about the literary interview when he asked the question, “what is the use of talking,” but it’s a nice question anyway. It’s a particularly interesting question to ask about Robert Kroetsch, who must be the most interviewed writer in the country, or at least, the writer most often asked serious questions about the craft of writing, and not about whether he likes animals, drinks Scotch or listens to Berlioz. Can he possibly have anything left to say that he hasn’t said before?

The answer, apparently, is yes, but before we get to that, it might be interesting to speculate about why so many people would want to interview Robert Kroetsch, so often, and at such length. I suspect that the reason is that in some odd way the literary figure, Robert Kroetsch (as opposed to the living human being, Robert Kroetsch) has become one of the most significant works of art yet produced by the prairies.

Robert Kroetsch has become a legendary figure. Like the characters in many of his novels, he is larger than life. His name has become a synonym for energy, audacity and verve, not only on the prairies but across the country. Nobody plans a conference on Canadian literature without putting his name at the top of the list of those who should be invited to speak. As you read these lines, in some creative writing class, some bar, or some furtive gathering of writers, critics, or scholars, Robert Kroetsch’s name is being mentioned not in the hushed tones reserved for Northrop Frye, but with affection and admiration. (He does have his enemies, but his tendency to forgive them reduces their force.)

Kroetsch was born in Alberta, and he is clearly the leader in the Alberta literary community, involved with their writer’s organization, and on the board of editors of the Camrose Review and NeWest Press. He is also deeply involved with the Saskatchewan literary community. He has taught at the summer school of the arts in Fort Qu’appelle, helped organize the system of writers’ retreats at Fort Qu’appelle and Emma Lake and edited Saskatchewan Gold, an anthology of short stories by Saskatchewan writers. Kroetsch now lives in Manitoba and teaches at the University of Manitoba. He is the most public member of the Manitoba Writer’s Guild, interviewed by the CBC and continually called on by the writing community for advice and support.

Beyond these few duties, he is considered by the writing community of British Columbia as a sort of blood brother, he organized the review of western Canadian books for Books in Canada, and he serves on the Canada Council’s advisory committee. When the Canadian government sent a group of writers to tour China last spring, Kroetsch was among them. When they sent writers to the German Kanada celebration, Kroetsch was there again. No conference on Canadian-American literary connections can hope to succeed without him.

Kroetsch has quite literally altered the direction of writing on the prairies through the model of his own work. The list of poems and books dedicated to him would make a fair sized volume by itself. It is almost impossible to find a writer on the prairies who does not believe that he has a special personal relationship with Robert Kroetsch. In fact, when he published The Crow Journals, an account of how his novel What The Crow Said came to be, he also provided a kind of diary of his journeys in the west in which he managed to name almost everybody writing or hoping to write in western Canada. Those he somehow missed are brooding still.

In short, there has rarely been in any of the arts in this country, a figure so all pervasive or so powerful. He doesn’t seem to have sought this power or to relish it, but it is there for all of that.

All of this biography brings me belatedly to the book. Labyrinths of Voice is the record of a series of interviews with Robert Kroetsch conducted by the editors Shirley Neuman and Robert Wilson. Their questions are interspersed with quotations from quite literally hundreds of contemporary critics and from Kroetsch’s own work. In the book, I suspect, you can find the reason for Kroetsch’s power and his popularity. The voices of the interviewers are a trifle academic, a trifle arid. Their questions are indeed labyrinthine. Then the answer comes in Kroetsch’s voice, earthy, full of energy, often colloquial. Kroetsch translates complex aesthetic theory into clear, concrete language. He talks about his own work and other writers’ work, and he explains what the theory means for writing here, now (with illustrations). The book takes the reader on a kind of Cook’s tour of contemporary theory and contemporary world literature and leaves him at the end thinking he almost understands. A remarkable feat.

I can’t imagine any other writer who could have made a book like Labyrinths of Voice even remotely accessible to a general reading public. Even with Kroetsch, the going isn’t always easy. Where, you wonder, could he ever have found the time to read so much, to know so much, to do so much? And always the voice that picks itself right up from the page and speaks to you. It’s the same generous, intelligent and vital voice that has been speaking to all those prairie writers, and they’re lucky to hear it.

So there you have it. Another fan’s notes, I suppose. ■

David Arnason is a Winnipeg writer whose most recent book, 50 Stories and A Piece of Advice was reviewed in Arts Manitoba, vol. 2, no.2.