This volume represents the first full-scale appreciation of Clark Blaise's writing in more than 25 years and the first comprehensive study of his now more than 20 books. Included are previously published essays by, among others, Robert Lecker, Alexander MacLeod, Catherine Sheldrick Ross, and the volume's editor, J.R. (Tim) Struthers, along with new essays by William Butt, Stephen Henighan, W.H. New, and Sandra Sabatini, as well as a brand-new autobiographical essay by Blaise himself. As important as these essays are for their insights into Blaise's works, they offer something more: a rich range of examples showing us how we, as readers and as writers, can come to understand much more intricately and to practice much more powerfully the art of the essay ourselves.

Highly respected nationally and internationally by scholars and creative writers for his work as a small press publisher, editor, literary critic, interviewer, and bibliographer, J.R. (Tim) Struthers has edited some twenty-five volumes of theory, critical essays, autobiography, fiction, and poetry -- including works in honour of or by such important Canadian writers as Clark Blaise, George Elliott, Jack Hodgins, Hugh Hood, John Metcalf, Alice Munro, and James Reaney. Tim is the author of the first two scholarly articles, world-wide, on Alice Munro and has been described by W.J. Keith, FRSC, as “probably the best literary interviewer in Canada.” Together with John Metcalf, he coedited Clark Blaise's Selected Essays. Still a very enthusiastic teacher of English, Tim has now devoted more than thirty years of full-time service to the University of Guelph. He lives in Guelph with his bride of forty years, poet and scholar Marianne Micros.

J.R. (Tim) Struthers' profile page

In the whole history of Canadian and American literature, I do not think there is another writer whose work is more directly hard-wired to the revolutionary socio-spatial transformations this continent has experienced from the middle of the twentieth century to the present.

Alexander MacLeod

Much of Blaise’s work has circled around questions that were a little ahead of their time when he first began investigating them, but now seem highly contemporary: Who am I? Where am I? Where do I belong? Does nationality count for anything? Am I a part of all that I have met? What airport is this anyway?

Margaret Atwood