Kroetsch, Robert

Gone Indian

Jeremy Sadness is a professional grad student of New York State University who heads out for the wilds of northwestern Canada to work out his inadequacies.

The Hornbooks of Rita K (cuRRents)

The Hornbooks of Rita K, Robert Kroetsch's first volume of new poetry in more than a decade, is a brilliant collection of mysterious fragments. Where has Rita gone and who is reconstructing her oeuvre? Written with wit and playfulness, Hornbooks is a welcome new work from one of Canada's best writers.

As for Me and My House (New Canadian Library)

“It’s an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind.”

The town is Horizon, the setting of Sinclair Ross’ brilliant classic study of life in the Depression era. Hailed by critics as one of Canada’s great novels, As For Me and My House takes the form of a journal. The unnamed diarist, one of the most complex and arresting characters in contemporary fiction, explores the bittersweet nature of human relationships, of the unspoken bonds that tie people together, and the undercurrents of feeling that often tear them apart. Her chronicle creates an intense atmosphere, rich with observed detail and natural imagery.

As For Me and My House is a landmark work. It is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the scope and power of the Canadian novel.

The Words of My Roaring

"I was electioneering. By God, people were listening. People were looking my way. And some joker with his arse begining to ache from sitting too long on a nail had to clear his throat and chip in, "Backstrom, what have you got to offer?" I looked at the speaker and saw he was a farmer and I said, "Mister, how would you like some rain?" A new edition of another classic from one of Canada's most enduring novelists.

A Likely Story (Non Fiction)

A Likely Story recounts the writing life of Robert Kroetsch, one of Canada's foremost writers and literary theorists. With incisive wit, humor and penetrating insight, Robert Kroetsch follows the events of his life, both real and literary, that have moved him from the bareness of desk and computer into the secret places at the heart of the writing experience. Throughout this chronicle, he toys ironically with the notion that he ceases to be himself when he writes, that writing allows him to escape from the confines of self into exciting varieties of the essay, story and poem. A Likely Story records in loving detail that escape. It is a remarkable assemblage of confessional personal essays, one of the principal elegiac poems of out time, a cowboy poem and speculative pieces that defy literary classification. Through them all Robert Kroetsch enters the landscape of recollection, discovery, delight, self-deception, play, grief and revelation, and through them all he insists with customary boldness: "I am attempting to write an autobiography in which I do not appear."

Badlands (New Press Canadian Classics)

In 1916, scientist William Dawe leads a palaeontological expedition into the badlands of Alberta, obsessed with achieving world renown by discovering dinosaur fossils. Fifty years later, his daughter, Anna, enters these same badlands. In her visit to the expedition site, she exposes not only the absurdity of her father's work, but also the folly of his male ambition.

The Ledger

Gaining Ground: European Critics on Canadian Literature (Western Canadian Literary Documents Series, Vol 6)

The Snowbird Poems (cuRRents)

ItÂ’s a matter of knowing winter. Snowbird travels south, seeks warmth, and begins waiting. Robert KroetschÂ’s new collection, The Snowbird Poems, is a brilliant flight of departure. Beached where he watches a drowning horizon, teased by romance, Snowbird lets his responses become a message in a bottle to the lost and for the found. Appearing at first wearing bifocals and drinking from a fake coconut, Snowbird goes on to retrieve the footprint of story from the ocean of memory.

The Temptations of Big Bear (New Canadian Library)

“What can that mean, I and my family will have a ‘reserve of one square mile’?”

So asks Big Bear of Governor Morris, come to impose a square treaty on the round, buffalo-covered world of the Plains Cree. As the buffalo vanish and the tension builds to the second Riel Rebellion, Big Bear alone of the prairie chiefs keeps up pressure for a better treaty by refusing to choose a reserve. He argues, “If any man has the right to put a rope around another man’s neck, some day someone will get choked.”

It is Big Bear’s story – and the story of Wandering Spirit, of Kitty McLean and John McDougall–that is told in this novel with rare and penetrating power. Permeated with a sense of place and time, this eagerly awaited work by Rudy Wiebe reflects the author’s sensitivity to the Canadian prairies, their history, the minds and hearts of their diverse people.

Exploring Big Bear’s isolated struggle, Wiebe has encompassed in one creative sweep not only his hero’s struggle for integrity, but the whole range and richness of the Plains culture. Here is the giant circle of the prairie horizon, and the joy, the sorrow, the pain and the triumph and the violence of unconquerable human beings faced with destruction.