- Title: Lament for a Literature: The Collapse of Canadian Book Publishing
- Author: Richard Stursberg
- Genre: Non-fiction
- Publisher: Sutherland House
- Pages: 98
In Lament for a Literature, author Richard Stursberg outlines his diagnosis of the problems with book publishing in English Canada – and what should be done about it.Supplied
Richard Stursberg, a writer and former television executive, believes that Canadian literature is an endangered species, and that he knows how to save it.
Lament for a Literature offers a compelling diagnosis of what has gone wrong in English-Canadian book publishing (French Canadian publishing is healthier). Some readers will disagree with some aspects of that diagnosis and proposed cure. I am one such reader. But whether you agree with Stursberg or not, everyone interested in the future of the country’s literature simply must read this book.
The title is a play on George Grant’s Lament for the Nation, which in 1965 declared that English Canada’s national identity had been sold to American and capitalist interests. That lament helped spur a wave of subsidized nationalism.
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The federal government in the 1960s and ’70s passed legislation to protect Canadian publishers from foreign acquisition, while offering financial support to publishers and writers. McClelland & Stewart, Macmillan of Canada and other houses discovered and promoted major new names: Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Marian Engel, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje and others.
But in 1988, Canada signed a free-trade agreement with the United States, and the slide into American domination of Canadian publishing was soon under way. Giant international firms swallowed up English-Canadian houses, with Ottawa unwilling or unable to intervene. Others went out of business altogether.
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Today, English Canada’s publishing industry is dominated by three foreign-owned firms: Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. “There can be debate about whether the Canadian-owned publishing houses control 3.7 or 5 per cent of the domestic market,” Stursberg writes. “What is not in dispute is that the market is overwhelmingly dominated by foreign multinationals.”
The big multinationals promote international bestsellers over new Canadian works. They snap up any new talent discovered by the surviving Canadian publishers. Canadian firms can’t compete with foreign firms to distribute books first published outside the country, depriving them of the vital backlists that would help finance Canadian works.
Many Canadian novelists have stopped writing about Canada, setting their stories in the United States, Britain or elsewhere. This helps them reach new markets, but the national narrative is lost.
Immigration policies, Stursberg believes, drowned Canadian nationalism in a sea of multiculturalism, leading former prime minister Justin Trudeau to famously declare there was “no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” making us the first “post-national state.”
At the beginning of his book, he asked four big questions that Canadian literature should seek to answer: Who are we? Who are we not? Where are we? What are we doing here?
The conclusion? “If there is no core identity, no sense of common nationhood, then there is nothing to explore or defend. The answer to the question ‘Who are we?’ was, according to Trudeau, ‘nobody in particular’; to ‘Where is here?’ the answer was ‘nowhere’; and, of course, to ‘What are we doing here?’ there was no answer at all. The logical extension of being a ‘post-national state’ was to abandon any efforts to pursue cultural sovereignty and a distinct identity. Canada seemed to give up.”
But Donald Trump’s return as U.S. president, with his tariffs and talk of annexation, has stirred an elbows-up nationalism that presents new opportunities. The author would have Parliament pass a “book law” that would establish a Crown corporation to promote Canadian publishers by offering tax credits, by giving them rights to book sales from foreign writers, by requiring booksellers to promote Canadian works, by increasing funding to writers, and by other means.
“Saving Canadian media and, most centrally, Canadian books is essential to saving ourselves,” he concludes.
There is much here that I disagree with. The golden age of publishing that Stursberg looks back on so fondly contained a great deal of taxpayer-funded dross. Even the book covers were notoriously dull.
Multiculturalism represents, for me, not a surrender of Canadian nationalism but its true identity. Stursberg fails to acknowledge the contribution of internationally owned publishers to Canadian publishing. (Full disclosure: I have authored, co-authored and edited a number of books published by McClelland & Stewart, HarperCollins and other firms.)
Canadian authors who sell into international markets reflect the success, not the failure, of our literature. And many of this country’s finest writers, such as Carley Fortune, do set their works in Canada.
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Finally, I would not support any new Crown corporation aimed at protecting Canadian book publishers.
But you don’t have to agree with Stursberg’s arguments to acknowledge the importance of them. Lament for a Literature forces all of us who love books to confront the state of Canadian publishing and acknowledge its weakness.
And while I disagree with some of his observations, I concur with others. He is right that the decline of the newspaper industry, apart from The Globe and Mail, has led to the loss of book reviews that were vital to promoting Canadian books.
I agree with his contention that the shift in fashion from carefully researched history and biography to the much cheaper memoir has deprived Canadians of important insights into the country’s past and present.
And while Canada has rightly addressed historical injustices visited on minorities, our culture has become too obsessed with grievance. As Stursberg puts it: “Identity politics has replaced the politics of national identity.”
We live in a time of national urgency after years of drift. Canadians need to acknowledge that drift and address that urgency. And that includes exploring who we are and where we should be going by reading Canadian books.
John Ibbitson is a writer and journalist. His most recent book, co-authored with Darrell Bricker, is Breaking Point: The Big New Shifts Putting Canada at Risk. (Signal/McClelland and Stewart, 2025.)