Travels by Night: A Memoir of the Sixties

by Douglas. Fetherling

Memoir of literary life in 1960s

Genres: Biography

255 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2014

Reviews

[Magdelanye · Rating 3 out of 5]

We were still young enough to be proud of how we could abuse our bodies with delayed retribution we mistook for impunity. p226

I could hardly wait to get started on this trip. After all, I was there, and I was still trying to figure out whether GF was among the fluid crowd I would see at readings and coffee houses; strolling along 4th Ave or seated at the long table at the Naam.

I was determined to save myself from the vacuousness that was all around me as well as from the hatred and violence p91

Canada was full of exiles and spies that is, those who cared too much and were sad and those who cared too little and were angry. p120

This confused account at least has an air of authenticity more fitting than some slick airbrushed attempt to either glamorize or trivialize the burst of creativity that defined the era.

There was a metallic edge to people's lives that prevented intimacy with either past or present. To be high all the time was the ideal....p96

That sounds about right. It's understandable that this memoir is so patchy. I would have liked more emphases on the values that the sixties embodied.


part of our our sorrow is that the sorrow is gone
leaving tourists and derelects behind p46

[Dennis Bolen · Rating 2 out of 5]

We need to know everything there is to know about Canadian
culture, we have so precious little of it. We've only been a
political entity for around 150-odd years; legally established since
1867; identified separate from Britain since WW I; been a
noticeable blip on the geo-political landscape only since WW II;
had writers who published with any great prominence in-country
since the 1950's; had a government patron since 1959; and had world-status artists (writers) since the 1970's. Other countries, those
to whom we compare ourselves, (Britain and the USA) are hundreds
of years older in the case of the former, and immensely bigger
and better-defined in the case of the latter. We gotta get going
here, before we lose the opportunity through the ever-likely
conjoining of world cultures through unimpeded electronic tele-computerization.

Truth is, there's little CDN culture that is distinguishable from the
American and our only hope is increasing the population of this
country at least three-fold, and mix the races vigorously, and
wait several hundred years and hope that world-telecom
does not make the whole planet irrevocably homogeneous so as to
completely swallow any chance of there being a distinctly
Canadian cultural identity. Quebec had better hack itself away
while the cultural getting is good.

Meanwhile, books on the subject for the common market have been
scant, and probably should be. Why talk about something that
hasn't happened yet? Nevertheless, Douglas Fetherling, an
American who journeyed to Toronto in the mid-1960's and fell into
a job at boutique arts-publisher Anansi, has conferred upon us his take on the important
events in those crucial years when there was finally a paying job
attached to the hitherto volunteer activities going on in the
non-big publishing struggle. Maybe there is a story there, albeit
probably premature. Too bad this handsomely-presented hardcover
volume does not present it.

First of all, we are treated to almost one hundred pages of
detail about Mr. Fetherling's family, complete with photos. Who
cares? Then he goes on about how he didn't like being an
American, that's why he first studied up, then moved to our
great real estate holding here in the North. At one point, in discussing a failed relationship, Fetherling opines:

'It was the Vietnam of relationships... It took time,
though, before I could admit to myself what I had been
forced to conclude: that beneath it all, she was an
American, she was infected with the great American
virus, that love was just as impossible there as any
other worthwhile impulse, state or endeavour, all of
them rendered unworkable by the institutionalized
violence, the purblind worship of stupidity and all the
rest.'

If you have to read through that quote a few times to derive
meaning, don't feel bad. That's the way Fetherling writes; scant
layers of meaning buried deep beneath folds of wooden,
consciousness-discouraging wordy prose. The worst part is that
you get the feeling he really thinks this is hot stuff.

When in 1967 we finally arrive on the Centennial-washed streets of
Toronto the name dropping gets going real good, but there is
interesting information here, if it is true. Certainly, the
illustrious folks therein studied, from Dennis Lee, David
Godfrey, et al, the originators of the House of Anansi, to the
ancillary types on the landscape: Jack McClelland, Leonard Cohen,
Margaret Atwood, even George Woodcock, who, like many of the
names, has only a secondhand treatment here and not an actual
speaking part. One wonders when all these personages will be
doing their own books, and how the sagas might well differ from
this tome.

To give him his due, Mr. Fetherling has wound a narrative from
his life which happens to involve a lot of Canadian publishing
from the early days of the smalls. There is the inevitable Eastern bias
(what else is new), though there is a short but entertaining
side-trip to Vancouver at one point.

[Devon Latimer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I misplaced my first copy... I was halfway through. I'm currently reading my second copy.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overly sensitive as a young boy, with a pathological stutter, Fetherling comes to Canada in the Sixties and becomes a fixture of the literary arts community. A good read for me, but I lived in those times. It may be less interesting to a different reader, not familiar or antagonistic to that period. The thing that stands out to me is how Fetherling has completely shed his "Americaness" if I can use such a term. He doesn't pine for his American roots, or constantly angst about missing his home as almost all Americans tend to do. He has actually found a way, it seems to embrace the Canadian identity, perhaps better than most natural Canucks...at least from the content of his book. ...a remarkable accomplishment in my view.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

a fascinating memoir of the 60s with most of the warts. Curiously it scandalized the publishing industry and was hard to get published, although GF goes out of his way not to say offensive things about friends and acquaintances.

[Brian R]

The author's name is Douglas Fetherling, not George.