Black Mountain Breakdown

Abstract

Martin Duberman. Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community. New York: Anchor Books, 1975. 578 pp. It is perhaps surprising that a relatively obscure experiment in the subculture of American intellectual and institutional life should assume growing mythical powers in Canada; more so when the experiment ended some twenty years ago. Yet the "Black Mountain" phenomenon has become a symbolic friction point of Canadian literary life; and there are rumours that the Canadian artistic commun- ity west of Winnipeg has an uneasy relationship with the Black Mountain heritage. George Bowering is still feeling the heat from the anti-Black Mountain revolt of his peers which went so far as to stage a counter-award ceremony to his Governor General's award. And Frank Davey, Black Mountain poet and the most prominent literary theorist from the Black Mountain heritage in Canada, is rumoured to be in hiding somethwere in the labyrinth of York University. Yet Black Mountain identification may give Bowering and Davey and the "Tish" poets and critics an otherwise denied niche in Canadian literary history - albeit as a negative reference group. For those Canadian poets and critics who feel more comfortable when poets assume their places in historical groups and critical categories, Martin Duberman's important book on the Black Mountain commun- ity, now reissued in paperback, will help them place Irving Layton in American intellectual history as a Black Mountain poet.