The Book of Malcolm: A review and remembrance of Fraser Sutherland
Fraser Sutherland died just over a year ago in March 2021.
His contribution to the world of Canadian literature consists of a few books of
poetry, prose, fiction, and nonfiction. From common friends, I learnt that he
had an amazing knack of annoying influential people in the literary world,
which is why he never got the recognition he deserved.
His frankness was motivated by his strict rules about
writing and writers. In his last poetry collection Bad Habits (Mosaic 2019), he
says, “Somehow a good writer has to work aslant to the existing order. For a
writer to be popular, to win prizes, to be feted by the media – those to me are
grounds for suspicion. If the trappings of public success, however welcome,
began to descend on me, I’d start to suspect myself.”
