Hugh Hood's Unsupported Assertions (1991)

Hugh Hood is a Canadian Catholic novelist and essayist. He is from TO, but I taught at U of Montreal. He sound's like he was quite the character. Here are some quotes from his 1991 publication Unsupported Assertions. A modest title for a text that bears the subtitle "Genius is only a series of unsupported assertions".

"This Sunday a grander ceremony was in progress, the dedication and opening of the first McDonald's in the Emilia Romagna, perhaps in the whole of Italy. Right here on the northeast corner of roadways sacred to independence and to the heroic monk and apostle of revolution...Naturally the restaurant is packed ...there is a boy here with five burgers an two Big Macs, but what are these among so many? To the Christian the table of the Eucharist is the first and the greatest of fast-food service" (Hugh Hood, "Cher in Bologna: McLuhan Revisited", 41-2). [Holly, if you're reading, you'd like this essay - remind me to get you a copy]

"Is there a corner of Canada free from authoritarian submissiviness?...Somebody described the American intelligentsia as a herd of independent minds. The Canadian publicist belongs to a gaggle of Canada geese. What causes this perpetually undignified posture? A few guesses might be made about its historical sources. Too-long-continued colonial status. Second rank status among North American nations. (Foreign journalists always refer to the USA as 'America' and now Canadians are starting to do the same.) The unwholesome predominance of authoritarian Christianity - Scots Presbyterianism and French Catholicism - in our morals and manners. I speak as a believing and practicing Catholic. The root of the matter requires careful attention, but the fact of the behavior, the outward and visible cringing, remains undeniable." (Hugh Hood, "Authority in Canada" 7-8, 1991)

Is Hugh Hood right? I'm not sure. In this essay he continually points to Canadian submissiveness, which doesn't really ring true to me. Still, I love a good essay that waltzes around the rhetorical ring with skill, dancing toward its subject like the shit eating opponent it is, swinging wildly at times, yet causing the reader to stand up and roar. Yeah, I'm a sucker.

"Do we have the will and the commitment to real, genuine, rooted personal freedom to get rid of the from the-top-down domination of our corporate bodies, big governments, grants boards, take-it-or-leave-it marketing men? In many ways Canada is the freest country in the world, but perhaps our freedom is made of fairy gold. Nobody will come and take me away in the night for writing this essay; there are other and subtler penalties I may be subject to: dismissal as a crank and an attention-seeking egoist, refusal to publish what I write about these matters. We have to keep telling ourselves that our magazines and newspapers and broadcasting networks and educational institutions and our government departments are out of our control. I'm supposed to take my orders from the top down like everybody else, and in my mind I always hear the stern admonition of the policeman. We don't want any trouble here!" (ibid 9).