Two Biographies

Started a collection of Canadian biographies but must start this entry with the admission that I haven't finished either of the first two. I got three quarters of the way through Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Romance of Canada and half way through The Life of Margaret Laurence. I am not sure why, exactly, because I was enjoying both books. I will probably finish them some day, when the mood strikes me.

Strangely enough, I have never read any Lawrence and never felt particularly motivated to read her ficton. But I was struck by two things, reading the first half of the work at hand, by biographer James King. First, a sense of resonance with her sense of being an observer in her own culture and family. Second, just how different the world of writing was for her, versus the experience of someone getting started today, not even a century later, in more or less the same social circumstances.

Laurier's biography, by Laurier L. LaPierre, is one of those books that make me proud to be Canadian, and demonstrates that our history is fascinating. More lawful, on the whole, and less bloody, than is the norm in Europe or the U.S. But every bit as passionate and full of drama. Not to mention quirky contradictions and great personalities.

Preliminary thoughts, of course, but some days in the 21st century those are all you get the time for expressing.