Childrens Learning in Montreal,

1
Childrens Learning in Montreal,

• a world of poverty and conflictual race relations
• Piety by Irving Layton P
• North by Clark Blaise N
• Snakebite by Ann Diamond -- S

2
Common Themes

• Montreal in the first part of the 20th century.
  Piety 20s, Maxie at 13 North Snake
  Bite -- 50s, Phil in junior high Julia 5 years
  old.
• Race Relations
• European Immigrants -- P p. 35 (? Italian) N
  p. 212 S (? Jewish) S immigrants in post-war
  surburbs. 245-46
• French against English (American English) S p.
  245
• Poverty
• Religions Schooling textbook pp. 43-44
• Love and Sex

3
Irving Layton the man

• In 1913, when Layton was only one year old, his
  family emigrated to Canada. They settled into
  Montreal's Jewish ghetto and a life of grinding
  poverty.
• Throughout his life, Irving has believed that his
  mother's presence protects and guides him, and so
  when he learned that Anna (Annette) Pottier was
  born the day of his mother's death in 1959, he
  took it as a sign to commit to Anna, who became
  his fifth and last wife.

• Born in Romania 12 Mar 1912 to Jewish parents.

Source http//www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/l
ayton/bio.htm
4
Irving Layton the poet

• Layton was one of a nucleus of young Montréal
  poets who believed they were effecting a
  revolution against insipid romanticism and
  published their poems in First Statement
• A controversialist His satire was generally
  directed against bourgeois dullness, and his
  famous love poems were erotically explicit.

• Nominated for Nobel Prize in 1980s.

Source http//www.tceplus.com/layton.htm
5
Piety Starting Questions

• What kind of immigrant community is presented in
  this story? How do they deal with their enemies
  and friends?
• Maxie and his family
• Why does Maxie decide to stop school?
• Why does Maxie refuse to go to the synagogue at
  the end?
• Why do his family respond so violently, esp. his
  mother?
• Is this a story of initiation? (Does Maxie
  learn and grow in it?)

6
Piety the Karpals and immigrant community

• Poverty p. 35.
• the Karpals, the poorest their personalities p.
  36 38
• Jews a negative sign East Europeans vs. South
  Europeans p. 35
• friendship and support p. 36

7
Maxies learning process

• Business world
• Mr. Grosnick finicky, wants everything tidy p.
  40 cares a lot about money pp. 40-41
• takes M. to synagogue every night
• Maxies response p.
  41-42
• The Adults world laughter and cruelty pp. 42-43
  dream p. 43
• Love Ms. Applebaum p. 43

8
Maxies learning process (2)

• Religion vs. Business
• Maxies views of God p. 44 exist or not,
  imprisoned or not.
• Growth getting higher pay, feel more important
  
• His discovery a decision against the
  whole family, turning the mother into something
  he always fears, cruelty.

9
Clark Blaise the migrant writer
-- at 10, after one of his father's frequent
business failures

• Born to Canadian parents in North Dakoda, 1940.
• French-Canadian father handsome, extroverted,
  charming, and untrustworthy English-Canadian
  mother upright, resolute and intelligent.
• Went to Canada for refuge
• -- at 5, following an assault charge against his
  father in Pittsburgh

10
Clark Blaise the migrant writer

• Started moving at the age of 6 month He moved 30
  times before the 8th grade and attended 25
  different schools. He spent his childhood in
  Alabama, Georgia, and central Florida, later in
  the American midwest, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh,
  but always returned to his mother's family in
  Winnipeg whenever his father "ran out of work, or
  was run out of work, or town" (RA 167).
• Montreal 1966 1978 13 years, the longest of
  his stay in one place (with his wife Bharati
  Mukherjee).

11
Clark Blaises self-creation in his fiction

• His work is usually half-autobiographical and
  half fictional.
• Anyone who led a life as tenuous as I did,
  fraught with almost daily evidence of
  evanescence, is obviously going to be concerned
  with establishing a place and a name and an
  identity for himself that he could not have
  established in life. I did not ever have a sense
  of place, or belonging, in my life. So I had to
  create it, fabricate it, in my art.
• e.g. "I was born in Fargo, North Dakota, in
  1940. from the autobiographical fragment
  "Memories of
• Unhousement" in Resident Alien.
• Source http//www.ucalgary.ca/library/SpecColl/bl
  aisbioc.htm

12
North Resident Alien

• "This book is a journey into my obsessions with
  self and place not just the whoness and whatness
  of identity, but the whereness of who and what I
  am." (RA 2).
• Two "autobiographical fragments four short
  stories about the character Carrier/Porter.

13
North Starting Questions

• How are different races or different nations set
  against each other?
• What is Phils position regarding these
  conflicts?
• What makes him change?
• What does the ending mean?

14
North Races or Places

• Phil in between different conflicting forces and
  opinions
• the U.S. vs. Canada
• English vs. French
• Mick Fortins looking for comrades p. 210
• Phils father and mothers argument over Phils
  schooling p. 212 213-14
• Pittsburgh vs. Papineau pp. 214
• Therèse vs. American teenagers p. 215

15
North Catholic school

• Phils experience of Catholic education
• punishment pp. 213 14 shame
• The societys conformity and dullness p. 218
• Therèse as tutor as a parole from solitude
• apologetics searching for nuns and monks as if
  they were wildlife

16
Phil and Therèse

• Therèse interested in English names American
  cultures pp. 216-17
• Find common interest with Therèse

17
Mother against French education

• Eaton Center, scones and lemon curd, speaking
  English
• McGill University
• Meeting with Ella, which means a separation
  between the mother and the son.
• Ending insecurities, constraints vs. youthful
  love learning

18
Snakebite

• a powerful sequence of short stories set in
  contemporary Montreal.
• Through a series of female protagonists she
  delineates, with irony and
  self-mockery, delicately etched stages of
  growth and degrees of loss.

19
Starting Questions

• What causes the narrators(Julias) sense of
  isolation?
• The more isolated the Adlers p. 246
• Symbols and Dreams meanings?
• photograph
• snakebite 247
• the girls imagined sceneries p. 248
• Why is this girls growth a moment of loss or
  fear?

20
Snakebite

• Julia between the mother and Marilyn Adler
• Julias and Marilyns appearance p. 250
• Julias respect for Marilyn
• Julias love and respect for her mother 247
  249 250
• Marilyns lie --further establishes Julias
  trust of her
• death Ms epilepsy
• Julias conversion at the end.