Review of Book Reviews
Judith MacDonald Guy Mulder, in a letter to the Telegram published in its dead-tree edition on Saturday, is scathing in her assessment of Sean T. Cadigan's Newfoundland and Labrador, A History:
Communism is dead; Marxism is dead; and no one has informed Mr. Cadigan.OK, just so we're all clear here:
To write a history of Newfoundland and Labrador from a neo-Marxist perspective is not only anachronistic, it is simply wrong and invalid.
It curves the truth and denigrates the struggle of all newcomers and settlers - from Day 1. It denies the individuality and fierce independence of the men and women who struck out on their own in this virgin place - answering to no one but themselves.
[...]
Newfoundlanders have never thought of themselves as scapegoats. They are survivors, workers, toilers, forever building a better life for themselves and theirs.
[...]
It is deeply discourteous and offensive to call Premier Danny Williams a tycoon. Stating that is to cast him in with all the previous fraudsters, hucksters, gangsters and impostors that have plagued, pillaged and plundered our beloved Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders.
On the contrary, Mr. Williams is an entrepreneur. He is a highly intelligent, compassionate human being who cares passionately about Newfoundland and Labrador, its people and the future for all.
The reviewer repeatedly favours the collective ("Newfoundlanders", "they").
She extols the virtue of the proletariat ("They are survivors, workers, toilers...".)
And she is deeply mistrustful of capital and capitalists ("fraudsters, hucksters, gangsters and impostors that have plagued, pillaged and plundered..."), except, of course, for the Father of the Motherland, Mr. Williams.
But Sean T. Cadigan is the Marxist?
posted by WJM @ 12:01 AM
1 Comments:
Ms,. Mulder either did not read or did not understand Cadigan's book.
That to one side her major grievances seems to be:
1. that he does not accept the anti-Confederate orthodoxy now in vogue, and,
2. calls Danny Williams a "tycoon".
On the first of these he ought to be commended.
On the second, it is hard to fathom why she objects to calling Williams a word that means a powerrful and wealthy businessman.
Isn't that what he is?
The view of Newfoundland - she being apparently unconcerned with Labrador - from Port Hope Ontario is apparentyl obscured.
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