Kirjahaku

Oil, the black gold of Texas, has given rise to many a myth. Oil could turn a man overnight into a millionaire-and did, for some. But these myths have obscured what life was really like in the oil patch, a place that was neither the El Dorado of legend nor quite the unredeemed den of sin and iniquity that some feared.In Roughnecks, Drillers, and Tool Pushers, Gerald Lynch provides a much-needed insider's view of the oil industry, describing life in various oil fields in and around Texas. He also chronicles changes in drilling methods and oil-field technology and how these changes affected him and his fellow oil-field workers. No one else has written a working-class history of the oil fields as colorful and articulate as this one.

From the preface: "Stephen Leacock is still often regarded as a writer of lightweight amusements and unchallenging satire, as an author without an imaginative centre who lacked a vision of sufficient power and clarity to sustain a lifetime of serious writing. According to this view, which has been too easily received, Leacock squandered an early, promising talent (though he was in fact, middle-aged when he published Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town in 1912), and consequently his writings, like his legendary Lord Ronald, "rode madly off in all directions." After years of chasing down Leacock's numerous literary mounts, I can assert that none of this is true. Leacock's writing emerges from a centre that is the confluence of the two traditions of humanism and toryism, traditions that found in Leacock fertile ground for the propagation of such qualities as tolerance of human fallibility and acceptance of social responsibility. What is remarkable with respect to Leacock's literary output is that even his furthest-flung, seemingly inconsequential humourous pieces move in relation to this tory-humanist centre." Lynch invites us to accompany him on an odyssey through Leacock's two main works, Sunshine Sketches and Arcadian Adventures of the Idle Rich ...He aspires to enlighten the open-minded reader, and is highly successful in doing so." Elspeth Cameron, Coordinator of Canadian Literature and Language Program, New College, University of Toronto

The search for the 'Great Canadian Novel' has long continued throughout our history. Controversially, to say the least, Gerald Lynch maintains that a version of it may already have been written - as a great Canadian short story cycle. In this unique text, the author launches into a fascinating literary-historical survey and genre study of the English-Canadian short story cycle - the literary form that occupies the middle ground between short stories and novels. This wide-ranging volume has much to say about the continuing relationship between place and identity in Canadian literature and culture. Initially, Lynch employs Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town for illustrative purposes, and begins by discussing two definitive features of short story cycles: the ways in which their form conveys meaning and the paramount function of their concluding stories, which are here called 'return stories.' Lynch then devotes five discrete but related chapters to six Canadian short story cycles, spanning some one hundred years from Duncan Campbell Scott to Thomas King, and tracing some surprising continuities in this distinctive genre. A number of the works are discussed extensively for the first time within the tradition of the Canadian short story cycle, which has never before been accorded book-length study in English. This engaging and intelligent volume will be of interest to the general reader as well as specialists in Canadian literature.

The search for the 'Great Canadian Novel' has long continued throughout our history. Controversially, to say the least, Gerald Lynch maintains that a version of it may already have been written - as a great Canadian short story cycle. In this unique text, the author launches into a fascinating literary-historical survey and genre study of the English-Canadian short story cycle - the literary form that occupies the middle ground between short stories and novels. This wide-ranging volume has much to say about the continuing relationship between place and identity in Canadian literature and culture. Initially, Lynch employs Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town for illustrative purposes, and begins by discussing two definitive features of short story cycles: the ways in which their form conveys meaning and the paramount function of their concluding stories, which are here called 'return stories.' Lynch then devotes five discrete but related chapters to six Canadian short story cycles, spanning some one hundred years from Duncan Campbell Scott to Thomas King, and tracing some surprising continuities in this distinctive genre. A number of the works are discussed extensively for the first time within the tradition of the Canadian short story cycle, which has never before been accorded book-length study in English. This engaging and intelligent volume will be of interest to the general reader as well as specialists in Canadian literature.