CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
8334
Partner Institution:
University of Calgary
Source Collection Title:
Robert Kroetsch fonds
Source Collection ID:
Source Collection Contributing Unit:
University of Calgary, Archives and Special Collections
Source Collection URI:
Source Collection Image URL:
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title:
Narrative Traces: Talking with Robert Kroetsch
Title Source:
Transcribed from the artifact
Language:
English
Production Context:
Studio recording
Identifiers:
[29.2]
Rights
Rights:
In Copyright (InC)
Notes:
Enters Public Domain at the end of 2037
CREATORS
Name:
Kroetsch, Robert
Dates:
1927-2011
CONTRIBUTORS
Name:
Edwards, Brian
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Cassette
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/8 inch
Side:
A and B
Tape Brand:
Unknown acetate
Sound Quality:
Excellent
Physical Condition:
Good
Other Physical Description:
Very clear, studio recorded. Background conversation at 46:03.
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
Duration:
T00:47:25
Size:
781.34 MB
Dates
Date:
1995
Type:
Performance Date
Notes:
Dates taken from item.
LOCATION
Address:
Deakin University Open Campus Program
Venue:
University of Calgary Studio, Calgary, Canada
CONTENT
Contents:
Robert Kroetsch and Brian Edwards
[00:00:01]
Discuss What the Crow Said (General Publishing, 1978) [as part of a course “Literary Processes” through Deakin University].
Robert Kroetsch
[00:28:55]
Mentions "Spending the Morning on the Beach".
Robert Kroetsch
[00:42:00]
Reads "What the Crow Said".
Notes:
- Part of a course entitled “Literary Processes” through Deakin University.
- Discussion of Robert Kroetsch’s recent work. Crow served as inspiration during difficult writing period. Robert Kroetsch prefers magic realism instead of documentary style, finds documentary unnatural to him “because I don’t believe documents are documents, that they themselves are another version of unreality or imagination if you will.” Versions of narrative operating through time, recovery of intermingling voices.
- Stories of family are important, especially relationships with uncles and aunts because there is a necessary closeness and separation (don’t have the binding structures found with parents).
- Creative strategies: resisting authorized versions of Alberta (historical, political), recovering personal experience but mediated by words (oral tradition). A few words recover an entire narrative pattern.
- Interruption and intervention: question of “what is a reader?” The reader has enormous body of narrative in their head which can be tapped into by process of intervention.
- Influences: earlier texts use myths/stories. In Crow, attempt to let multiple narratives speak at once without privileging one. i.e. the perception of crows as negative in Western world, but is a smart, positive, trickster figure in Indigenous epistemologies.
- Story doesn’t exist until it is in the reader’s mind? Robert Kroetsch has abandoned romantic notion of the writer/artist. Meta-textualism.
- Brian: post-modern privileges the reader, reader is invited into the text. Robert Kroetsch: It is difficult and dangerous to be the reader, because reading is no longer a controlled experience, but allows for the reader to explore. There is a sense of play or discovery.
- Structuring narrative through love and death. Behind comedy there is a notion of great mystery.
- Plays with the stereotype of active male and passive female
- The responsibilities of the writer, reader, and critic: It is a gift exchange that goes both ways between reader and writer. The critic extends the reading. Brian: Notion of ideal reading assumes ideal reader. Robert Kroetsch: agrees and resists the ideal reading, through the gift exchange has surrendered himself to the reader. There is no ideal context for reading.
- Robert Kroetsch writes poetry by resisting poetry. Deprivileging the word and the role of the writer. An interest in language. Poetry is concerned with more than words (he compares this to prose). It is not because of the high rhetoric, but the greater ability to focus on the language.
- What parts of Crow are distinctly Canadian? Recovering the vitality of the local; skepticism of the “universal.”
NOTES
RELATED WORKS
Citation:
Kroetsch, What the Crow Said (1978)