Book Reviews

He Bacame His Admirers

Elaine Kalman Naves (Author)
Robert Weaver: Godfather of Canadian Literature. Véhicule Press
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Reviewed by Robert Thacker

Writing to Robert Weaver at the CBC on 7 May 1975 to advocate for a young writer she wanted to help, Margaret Laurence made her case and, before closing, continued a bit apologetically, “I hope you don’t mind my approaching you about this, Bob, but as you have long been the Writers-Rock-of-Gibraltar, I thought you would not mind. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.” Found among the Robert Weaver Fonds at the National Archives (MG 31, D 162), this letter both encapsulates the central assumption of this book and offers an apt phrasing for Robert Weaver’s relation to Canadian literature. Working from the CBC between 1948-85, Weaver was, in fact, the “Rock-of-Gibraltar” for Canadian writers, something that Laurence knew well when she wrote to him.

She also knew that he would certainly not mind her inquiry and that, quietly and characteristically, Bob Weaver would do whatever he could to help the writer she was advocating. That is what he did, that is what he had always done, and that, seemingly, is what Weaver would always do. Anyone who knows Canadian writing from the 1950s on knows of Weaver as key presence and national institution: at the CBC—Canadian Short Story, Anthology, Critically Speaking, and other literary programs—as the leading editorial figure at The Tamarack Review (1957-82), as an anthologist of Canadian writing—thirteen volumes published between 1952 and 1999—and as the initiator of the CBC’s ongoing literary competitions. Throughout, Weaver knew all the writers, he made things happen for them, he encouraged and connected them to each other, he responded, he cared. He was “a one-man national literary network,” as Robert Fulford once said of him, a writers’ “Rock-of-Gibraltar” indeed

Given this, Robert Weaver: Godfather of Canadian Literature is an aptly fortuitous book. Having grown as “a companion piece” to the two-part radio profile on Weaver that Naves prepared for broadcast on CBC’s Ideas (one which aired, ironically, within a fortnight of Weaver’s death in late January 2008), it is less a biography than it is an apt assemblage, a mélange of brief expository biography, archival illustration and, especially, interviews. These interviews begin, as they should, with Weaver himself, but Naves continues on to others she calls “The Legacy”: Margaret Atwood, Barry Callaghan, Robert Fulford, Alice Munro, Alistair MacLeod, Eric Friesen, and Janice Kulyk Keefer. These interviews make up fully two-thirds of the book’s text and, because together they reflect a variety of perspectives on Weaver’s presences and works over time, they effectively elaborate his utterly unique importance to Canadian letters during the latter half of the twentieth century. A writer herself, Naves brings that perspective to this work—the book is not, she says at the outset, “a definitive biography,” nor is it “an exhaustive scholarly treatment”; rather, Robert Weaver: Godfather of Canadian Literature is a celebration of Weaver and his work, a celebration of writers and their works, and a recognition of the effects that one person, possessed with both a generous and a critical attitude, can have. And the book is something of a memorial piece too, since it was launched just as Weaver died and as Naves’ Ideas program was broadcast.

When Weaver began working at the CBC in November 1948 as a program organizer, Naves writes, he “decided his overarching objective was the advancement and development of Canadian literature.” And though Weaver was notoriously self-effacing, Naves got him to admit “I guess self-consciously I created myself.” He did, and as he did, he played a critical role in the creation of Canadian literature at a critical time. No nationalist, Fulford and others assert here, Weaver sought out the best writing he could find and consciously nurtured it. As is well known and detailed here again, he was lifeline to Alice Munro during the 1950s and early 1960s, the only literary person she really knew then. And so he was to countless others as well. And this was not always easy. Barry Callaghan, offering his perspective as both a writer and as the son of Morley Callaghan, whose contacts with Weaver were many, says that Weaver “was a shy man dealing with egomaniacs who not only wanted him to publish them on the radio, they wanted his money. Those people can get restless. Those people can get difficult. Those people can get abusive. They can get pleading, they can put enormous guilt moves on you.” So they did, Naves shows, but Weaver worked through it all, seemingly serene, his eye ever on getting the quality writing he sought.

As he did, Bob Weaver both knew and appreciated what he was doing. Naves quotes what she rightly calls “an unusually revealing personal reflection” he published in the preface to Canadian Short Stories, Third Series (1978). There, after noting his thirty years at the CBC and his twenty with The Tamarack Review, Weaver wrote: “I know all of the writers who have stories in this book, and in some cases I have known them and worked with them from the very beginning of their careers. Watching their development, and the development of the modern short story in Canada, has been the most rewarding experience of my editorial career.” Such comments, and many others like it here, confirm Weaver’s presence and effect, his significance and importance, unequivocally. Now that he is gone, Bob Weaver is, truly, very much like Auden on Yeats: a man who “became his admirers.” So Naves’ book memorializes.

Yet Robert Weaver: Godfather of Canadian Literature, apt as it is, should not be the final telling of Weaver’s story. A scholarly biography, one that draws with precision from Weaver’s papers in the National Archives and from relevant individual author archives, remains to be done and is still needed. As Naves notes, Mark Everard’s 1984 MA Thesis on Weaver’s career is a good start, and I have myself told the story of Weaver’s nurturing of Munro’s writing, but a thorough broad-based biography grounded in Canadian cultural history remains a great necessity. The story of Robert Weaver—at the CBC, leading the editorial group at The Tamarack Review, making and collaborating on his many anthologies, knowing almost everyone involved in Canadian writing—is a critical story of Canada’s cultural past. Quiet, gracious, knowing, determined, and driven, Robert Weaver did an enormous amount to make Canadian literature happen from the 1950s on. This book is but a good beginning.

This review originally appeared in Canadian Literature #198 (Autumn 2008), Canada and Its Discontents. (pg. 154 - 156)

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