Review Essay: Atwood's Toronto

Abstract

Arnold E. Davidson, Seeing in the Dark: Atwood's Toronto: ECW Press, 1997. I am delighted to have this opportunity to reflect here on Seeing in the Dark, an ECW monograph by Ted Davidson on Atwood's Cat's Eye. It provides the occasion to gather three of my enthusiasms. I include among them a growing admiration of Atwood as provocative and adaptive writer, of Cat's as a particularly fine novel and one of the best ever written about Toronto and, most appropriately, of Ted Davidson as a resourceful Canadian-American scholar-researcher and a leading figure in the burgeoning world of Atwood studies. I must begin with Ted (Arnold just won't do) because, in the wake of his recent death and with the loss felt by so many of us the news, this is an opportunity to honor a good friend, a keen teacher (one who always had a ready twinkle in his eye to balance his evident seriousness), and a prolific academic who has been an important contributor to the cause of literature, particularly in the United States, over the thirty-five years of his teaching career Elmhurst College, Michigan State, and Duke University. Ted's illness and death took many of us by surprise and, as is often the case, left insufficient time to pay our respects for an academic life well lived and a publishing career of much substance and importance. His was above all an influential presence on the Canadian-American scene. For decades he fostered initiatives, provided background support to important organizations, and led always by diligent scholarly example. A review of his publications reveals an exemplary level of productivity, evidence of a man who sought to leave his mark above all through his writing. One finds there numerous books, but most eye-catching is the total of some seventy essays on writers as diverse as Joseph Conrad (his doctoral subject under the guidance of Robert Kroetsch), Laurence Sterne, John Fowles, Aritha van Herk, Jean Rhys, Joy Kogawa, Laurence, Mordecai Richler, W.O. Mitchell, Peter Such, Kroetsch himself, and of course Atwood. Ted was a founding member of the Atwood Society and has written extensively about her work. His The Art of Atwood: Essays in Criticism (1981), co-edited with his then-wife, Cathy, was one of the first books to appear in the now-crowded Atwood field and, the time of his death, his book-length manuscript, Margaret Atwood: Violation and Fictional Form was under consideration for publication. I hope it will duly appear. Many of us will no doubt have occasion in the future to consult his thoughtful and (blessedly) readable studies. His two ECW monographs in the Canadian Fiction Studies series (the other is on Kogawa's Obasan) are valuable readings of important books. Another that I have found particularly useful and stimulating is his study of the particularities of contemporary western writing, Coyote Country: Fictions of the West (1994). Seeing in the Dark: Atwood's Eye was Ted's seventh book. A function of Atwood's prominence is that this is her seventh novel to be included in ECW's Canadian Fiction Series (of thirty-five titles to date), outstripping any other writer. Laurence is next with five. And if ever there was a novel to justify an expanding reputation, it is certainly Cat's Eye. I remember my initial resistance to reading it when it first came out. I was, like many Canadianists in 1988, more than a little (over) at wooded. There was so much praise and ballyhoo, and many of us were not then convinced that the incisive poet could duplicate her achievements as a writer of fiction. It was only when my wife praised it highly and recommended it to our thirteen-year-old daughter that I picked it up. My wife's view was that it might help Jess, who was just then experiencing some difficult times school the hands of her friends and their shifting alliances, to understand how cruel young girls could be to one another. …