Outside the Box: The Life and Legacy of Writer Mona Gould, the Grandmother I Thought I Knew

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Outside the Box: The Life and Legacy of Writer Mona Gould, the Grandmother I Thought I Knew

4.88 of 5 stars 4.88 · rating details · 8 ratings · 3 reviews

Years later, Maria took on the daunting task of sorting through Mona's mountain of papers to create an archive for the University of Toronto's Fisher Rare Book Library. The chaotic state of the boxes reflected Mona's flamboyant and demanding personality, yet they also drew an important picture of the life of a Canadian freelancer in the twentieth century. Mona had begun pu...more

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published August 18th 2011 by McGill-Queen's University Press

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Dec 23, 2011 Kerry Clare rated it 5 of 5 stars

Maria Meindl has written one of the best books I’ve read this year in Outside the Box: The Life and Legacy of Writer Mona Gould, The Grandmother I Thought I Knew, and it’s a book that proves fascinating on all different kinds of levels. First, Meindl’s book is a history of magazines and radio broadcasting in Canada during the mid-2oth century, demonstrated by the experiences of Mona Gould who made her entire career as a freelancer in poetry, copy-writing, feature-writing, radio broadcasting, and...more Maria Meindl has written one of the best books I’ve read this year in Outside the Box: The Life and Legacy of Writer Mona Gould, The Grandmother I Thought I Knew, and it’s a book that proves fascinating on all different kinds of levels. First, Meindl’s book is a history of magazines and radio broadcasting in Canada during the mid-2oth century, demonstrated by the experiences of Mona Gould who made her entire career as a freelancer in poetry, copy-writing, feature-writing, radio broadcasting, and column-writing between the 1930s and the 1960s. She wrote for publications including Saturday Night and Chatelaine, worked as a publicist for the Red Cross during WWII, was affected by the split between commercial and literary writing that took place during the 1950s, published two books of poetry, and her most famous poem “That Was My Brother” in included in anthologies and textbooks to this day. In her radio broadcasts, she’d have to find subtle ways to work word of her program’s sponsor into her scripts. At times, Gould was published in the same periodicals as poets as notable as PK Page and Margaret Avison, but never achieved the same prominence herself, and from this failure to remarkably ascend, her story has a great deal more to tell about the wider world of publishing and broadcasting in her time than those of those whose experiences were so singular.

Which is not to say that Mona Gould was not remarkable or singular. At her best and worst, there was no one else quite like her, and Meindl has done a tremendous job of portraying such a complicated woman and the ambivalence involved in family relationships. Though she certainly had the resources at her disposal– Outside the Box is not just Mona’s story, but is also the story of Maria’s years-long efforts to catalogue Mona’s archives for the Thomas Fisher Library at the University of Toronto. Boxes upon boxes she’d inherited after her grandmother’s death, and she writes about how the boxes were conspicuous in the archives– everything slung into boxes willy-nilly, the boxes themselves tatted and from anywhere, and the papers within covered with dust and cat-hair, and she’d discover open tubs of vaseline, and on the back of one pile of of papers was stuck a colostomy bag. The boxes were a mess, and cataloguing them often appeared an impossible task. More burden than gift, as her grandmother had so often seemed to be to Maria. And yet there was richness to be found, and a Mona Gould to be discovered who was distinct from the alcoholic, mean-spirited woman she remembered as having come between her parents in their marriage. Letters written to lifelong friends, papers that demonstrated that Mona had worked hard for her success and it had not simply appeared to her, as she sometimes spun it. That this woman who put herself above feminism and craved approval from men had battled discrimination throughout her career. Maria had been aware that her grandmother had been something of a liar, but the truth behind these stories is often more fascinating than she’d ever imagined.

The book also has much to say to a society so fixated on the cult of personality, celebrity, which Meindl shows is not an altogether modern phenomenon. It is likely that Mona Gould worked as hard on cultivating her “brand” as she did her writing (though, obviously, she would not have put it that way), craving attention and admiration, and in the end, she’d prove a victim of society’s fickleness, and to the changingness of fashion.

Ultimately, however, Outside the Box is a story of inheritance, of coming to terms with where we’ve come from and who we are. In exquisite prose and with a fascinating mastery of chronology, Meindl makes this her own story as much as Mona’s, the story of how becoming settled in her own life and happiness required her to make peace with her family’s past, to unpack the metaphoric baggage that was as heavy as all those boxes and boxes her grandmother had left her.
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Nov 28, 2011 T. Edward rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Poets, war and Canadian history buffs, woman's studies students, academics

Shelves: biography, canadjen-eh, history, non-fiction

When Canadian poet and broadcaster Mona Gould passed away in 1999 she left behind 38 boxes of unsorted documents, letters, notebooks and personal minutia detailing nearly every facet of her long, tumultuous life. The task of organizing this vast and intimidating jumble into a researchable collection fell into the hands of the only person who could really make sense of it all - her somewhat reluctant granddaughter and author of this work, Maria Meindl.

"Outside the Box" is the author's own journey...more When Canadian poet and broadcaster Mona Gould passed away in 1999 she left behind 38 boxes of unsorted documents, letters, notebooks and personal minutia detailing nearly every facet of her long, tumultuous life. The task of organizing this vast and intimidating jumble into a researchable collection fell into the hands of the only person who could really make sense of it all - her somewhat reluctant granddaughter and author of this work, Maria Meindl.

"Outside the Box" is the author's own journey through this Borgesian labyrinth of personal details, and the six year struggle to piece it together into a coherent and functional archive for the University of Toronto's research library. Part biography and part personal revelation, the book offers a wonderful depiction of Mona Gould's career during an eventful period, starting in depression era Canada and continuing on for the better part of half a century. We're given remarkably vivid and evocative portrayals of Southern Ontario life during this turbulent era, and a rich portrait of the enigmatic, fiercely independent, larger than life figure that struggled and (largely) succeeded in the midst of it all. Many of the poems are reprinted in their full text (some with annotations) - including her most famous wartime work, "This Was my Brother," a poem familiar to many Canadians during and after World War 2.

For the historical elements alone this book is a unique and worthy addition to Canadian literary culture. But the additional depth and intrigue is the author's own ambivalence at both the burden of having to sort the massive archives and her own changing impressions of the grandiose, perpetually yarn-spinning matriarch who had essentially groomed the author for the onerous task of preserving her proud but diminishing legacy.

Of course, many secrets were contained in those boxes and their unveiling brought about some offputting disparities for the author between the storytelling persona who was always "on" for her public and audience - even if her "audience" was a rapt youngster hanging on on every word - and the more complex, contradictory person kept largely hidden from view. The myriad juxtapositions between secrets and omissions, the real and the remembered, the acted and the actual and what it all meant for the author's evolving understanding of this beguiling and elusive character, are as deftly balanced as a Calder mobile.

There is much to praise and reflect on in these pages, not the least of which is the role of forgiveness in our regard for the departed and the author's own admiration for a life fully seized with nothing held back.
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Sep 24, 2012 Erika rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked this up because the author is in my writer's group. For some reason I have a prejudice against writers whom I know. How could people that I've met be really, really good writers? Aren't the really, really good writers gods from another world? Yet, for the second time I've been absolutely blown away by a writer I've met. (The first time was with Heather Birrell's Mad Hope.)

I can unequivocally say Maria Meindl's memoir of her grandmother is a fantastic book. The writing is flawless and t...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Found Press added it

Shelves: books-by-found-press-authors

Nov 25, 2012 Carole Yeaman rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biog-memoir, canadian, non-fiction, library-loan, favorites

Oct 18, 2012 Renée marked it as to-read

Sep 19, 2012 Suzanne Alyssa Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, 2012-reads

Jun 16, 2012 Cheryl marked it as to-read

Sep 06, 2012 Tina rated it 5 of 5 stars

Apr 11, 2012 Karyn Huenemann rated it 4 of 5 stars

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Sep 15, 2011 Lou rated it 5 of 5 stars

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