In a conversation I had with him, Canadian critic, editor and short story writer John Metcalf hauls off on both the Giller Prize and two-time winner M.G. Vassanji; the former for boosterism and an inability to distinguish between good and bad literature (for placing two-time winner Alice Munro in the same category as Vassanji), and the latter for being a person who, ‘there’s no question,’ can’t " handle the English language".
I met with Vassanji in Montreal at the Blue Met Writers Festival ostensibly to talk about his new Penguin biography of Mordecai Richler (please stay tuned for the audio); but before commencing, I asked him to respond to Metcalf’s attacks. Here’s what he had to say:
