Selected from thousands of pages of the daily journals of George Fetherling - the inexhaustible novelist, poet, and cultural commentator - The Writing Life reveals an astute and candid observer of his contemporaries as well as himself. Hundreds of figures in the arts and public life crisscross the pages of Fetherling's journals, from Margaret Atwood and Marshall McLuhan, to Gwendolyn MacEwen and Conrad Black. The book begins in mid-1970s Toronto, a time of cultural ferment, and carries on to Vancouver and a new century. A captivating and intimate narrative, The Writing Life provides a compelling portrait of the last three decades of Canadian cultural life. From the book: Tuesday 4 February 1992 / Toronto Early this morning the latest in a series of strange phone calls from Edmund Carpenter in New York to discuss successive versions of his Canadian Notes & Queries piece on Marshall McLuhan. He falls to reminiscing and at one point says: "Marshall always reminded me of that passage in Boswell in which Boswell says that if you chanced to take shelter from a rain storm for a few minutes in Dr Johnson's company, you would come away convinced that you had just met the smartest man in the world. Marshall was like that too. Of course, if you spent an hour with Marshall, well, that was something quite different."

A.F. Moritz has published more than twenty collections of poetry as well as important works of literary history and numerous translations of Latin American verse. A leading figure in the literary life of Canada, he has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a major award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Two of his most recent works have reaffirmed his reputation: Night Street Repairs (2004) received the ReLit Award and The Sentinel (2008) won both the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine and the Griffin Poetry Prize. He teaches at the University of Toronto.

George Fetherling's profile page

Brian Busby is Ricochet Books’ series editor. He is the author of A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Translator, Memoirist and Pornographer (McGill-Queens UP, 2011) and editor of The Heart Accepts it all: Selected Letters of John Glassco (Véhicule, 2013).

Brian Busby's profile page

"... a witty and engaging literary journal." David Macfarlane, Toronto Star

"Fetherling's narration is engaging, amusing, and poignant. His portrait of himself is handled particularly well, as we are introduced to a man who has struggled with several social obstacles, but who is also, as the continuity and the spirit of the journal entries show, a perceptive witness to his time and place." Joel Yanofsky, author of Mordecai and Me: An Appreciation of a Kind

"Given Fetherling's distinction and his lifelong immersion in the Canadian world of letters from east to west, we might well expect his journals, covering several decades, to include both early personal rivalries and his many generous friendships that evolved over the years. What we have here is both a fascinating public record of the cultural scene in Canada and an eloquent, intimate sense of the writer's private life." Susanna Egan, University of British Columbia