Two Hoots for Grey Owl

I wrote an earlier posting about my upset over learning that acclaimed Canadian First Nations author Joseph Boyden has no provable First Nations genealogy. In fact Boyden is a white boy from Toronto's suburban Willowdale.  Boyden's pretense at being a "genuine" First Nations author reminded many people of that original poseur, Grey Owl. It will be interesting to see if Boyden's literary reputation is treated as harshly for his false claims as Grey Owl's was. Because of the Boyden affair, I decided to read Grey Owl for the first time, and I've been pleasantly surprised at what an entertaining, even shamanic, writer Grey Owl was. Here's a passage which would do Boyden proud:
   

paragraph from chapter X111, The Tree


  All this the bear saw and heard; and who can ever know what strange thoughts passed behind those small sagacious eyes, or what unfulfilled longings surged through that mighty frame, as he gazed so steadily and so long out upon that, to him, undiscovered country with its far off vistas and its unknown inhabitants. But it was not his home, and he never went there. And the great jack-pine, giant of its kind and old, even as he was, became to him a kind of milepost or a monument, and the companionship of the tree seemed to fill some want in his lonely life, and he began to feel, in his dim, uncouth way, that it lived and was, for all it seemed so quiet and never moved, a friend. And so he put his mark upon it with his teeth. And the tree, that had never been scored since the tiny cuts were made upon it by the rabbits' teeth, and was now covered by the concentric rings of four hundred years, felt a strange thrill go through all it fibres at this recognition, and knew than that it too, had life. And when the bear was no longer there, the ground around its foot felt bare and empty, and when the huge brown beast returned and took his accustomed place, the soul of the tree would thrill, and a kind of a tremor pass among its branches; and the bear would lie contentedly beneath it and gaze out over the wide plains that spread for ever on into the Unknown.


Tales of an Empty Cabin, Lovat Dickson Limited, London UK, 1936


Grey Owl (not Joseph Boyden)

Grey Owl Redux

If I could find the energy, I'd do a long piece here on the Boyden affair, with reference to Grey Owl. The Boyden fiasco has finally sufficiently piqued my interest in Grey Owl to borrow his book, TALES OF AN EMPTY CABIN, from the Marmora Library. Reading it it's hard to believe anyone ever took him seriously as a First Nations author. Even the persona he presents as the narrator doesn't seem to be claiming First Nations status . . . but I guess all the pics of him in a long feathered headdress make up for his 'misrepresented' authorial voice ;  )  I've only read the first 4 or 5 chapters, but they're all really corny and very, velly British in voice and viewpoint. While reading I keep imagining Boyden decked out in similar Grey Owl head gear  :  )-

On a personal level I feel bamboozled learning Boyden has less documented First Nations heritage than I do! So far as I know I may not have any First Nations DNA, but I do have a high profile documented ancestor, Charlotte (nee Johnston, Oge-Buno-Quay), the wife of Arch Deacon William McMurray (on my mother's side, she was a McMurray - when I buried her 2 years ago there was the stern visage of Arch Deacon McMurray hanging in the hallways of St. John's Anglican Church in Ancaster).

It was just a few months ago that I finally broke down & bought Boyden's THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE at the Bookworm in Madoc. I thought I was reading a fictionalized account of current First Nations life as presented by an authentic First Nations author. I wouldn't have bought and read his book if I'd known he was just another boring white dude from north TO who was Grey Owling! I think there's a huge difference between writing a fictionalized account of a real historical time period when you are genuinely living in that period versus if a writer is presenting himself/herself as someone who has lived and genuinely experienced that lifestyle, but isn't genuine.

Of course time, as is usual with literature, sorts things out. Brit author Hari Kunzru, in his novel MY REVOLUTIONS,  wrote a fictionalized account of the hippie era in Great Britain. I find this acceptable - it's a fictionalized account of a real time, but one which the author wrote about several decades later, and of a life style he obviously hadn't experienced first hand. I do appreciate that Kunzru credited my EEL PIE DHARMA as a source, and there are more than a few similarities between his main character and myself (including his protagonist's first name), but I most definitely wasn't a member of the angry brigades ;  )-   If I'd been able to stay in the us of a I might have become a white panther, tho - scary thought!

Anyway, Boyden's books will find their deserved place in the canons of CanLit based on whatever literary merit they have as appropriated fiction, rather than as a fictionalized account of a life truly led. Be interesting to see if anyone is reading Boyden in over half a century like Grey Owl - I'm enjoying Grey Owl's work in a very different way than a reader would have in the 1930s.