{"id":21328,"date":"2016-10-26T14:34:13","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T18:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=21328"},"modified":"2024-08-09T07:42:13","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T11:42:13","slug":"2016-17-munro-beattie-lecture-andre-alexis-author-of-giller-prize-winning-novel-fifteen-dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2016\/2016-17-munro-beattie-lecture-andre-alexis-author-of-giller-prize-winning-novel-fifteen-dogs\/","title":{"rendered":"2016-17 Munro Beattie Lecture, Andr\u00e9 Alexis, author of Giller Prize-winning novel Fifteen Dogs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n\n
\n
\n
\n

\n 2016-17 Munro Beattie Lecture, Andr\u00e9 Alexis, author of Giller Prize-winning novel Fifteen Dogs\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n
\"Andr\u00e9
Andr\u00e9 Alexis<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Dean of FASS<\/a> and the Department of English<\/a> are delighted to announce that the 2016-2017 Munro Beattie Lecture<\/a> will be delivered by acclaimed Canadian writer\u2014and former Carleton student\u2014Andr\u00e9 Alexis. The Munro Beattie Lecture was launched in 1985 to honour the English department\u2019s founding chair and his contributions to literary studies in Canada. 2017 marks not only the 75th<\/sup> anniversary of Carleton University, but the 65th<\/sup> anniversary of the Department of English. This year\u2019s Munro Beattie lecture will feature festivities such as door prizes and a reception with cake to help to kick off CU 75 celebrations, and to toast the English department\u2019s history as a key contributor to the development of Canadian literary studies<\/a> as an academic field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andr\u00e9 Alexis was awarded the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize <\/a>for Fifteen Dogs, <\/em>a novel praised by the jury as \u201ca wonderful and original\u201d work \u201cthat challenges the reader to examine their own existence and recall the age old question, what\u2019s the meaning of life?\u201d Passing a veterinary clinic on their way home from a bar in Toronto, the gods Apollo and Hermes grant human intelligence to the dogs inside to settle a bet about whether such a gift will make the animals happier. In the narrative that follows, the dogs roam through the city, seeing it through new eyes and learning the rewards and pitfalls of human consciousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in Trinidad, Alexis moved to Canada in 1961 at the age of four, where his family eventually settled in Ottawa. The city appears as a dream-like presence in the stories of his celebrated first book, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa<\/em> (1994). The perception of the national capital as a staid bureaucratic town is turned on its head in stories where unassuming locations bear witness to the surreal and the macabre: a soucouyant<\/em> (a vampiric figure from Trinidadian folklore) lives quietly in a house in Sandy Hill; a body floats in the sky above the Merivale Shopping Centre; a blue-faced man rises from the dead and grants three wishes to the tenant of an apartment in Lowertown. These stories reflect Alexis\u2019 sense of the city as a mysterious place, where the buildings and the names of the streets evoke a buried emotional history.<\/p>\n\n\n

[wide-image image=”21332″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now living in Toronto, Alexis remembers Ottawa as a place that he associates with \u201cthe opening up of the world.\u201d In particular, he remembers Carleton, where he studied English Literature<\/a> and Russian, as a place that nourished his love of reading, connecting him with the fictional universes of writers like Kawabata, Mishima, Borges, Tolstoy, and Pasternak, as well as Canadian writers including poets Margaret Avison and bp nichol, and novelists Margaret Laurence and Mordecai Richler. Listen to his interview<\/a> with Branko Gorjup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before winning the Giller last year, Alexis was perhaps best known for his award-winning first novel, Childhood<\/em> (1997). The novel is a meditation on identity, displacement, and the elusiveness of home, and readers have often sought to connect it to Alexis\u2019 own experience as a second-generation immigrant; however, he himself resists the notion that his fiction is autobiographical. As he writes in a 2015 essay<\/a>, his interest lies not in sharing his life on the page, but in storytelling itself, \u201cwith all of its ins and outs, its rhythms, graces, failures, byways, irreality, and, of course, its traditions.\u201d These obsessions are particularly visible in Alexis\u2019 most recent work: Pastoral<\/em> (2013) is a contemporary reworking of the classical genre in which shepherds trade songs and stories in an idealized rural landscape; Fifteen Dogs <\/em> resurrects the ancient form of the apologue<\/em>, a moral tale involving animals. His latest novel, The Hidden Keys<\/em>, released in September 2016, is an adventure story inspired by Treasure Island<\/em> but relocated to present-day Toronto. These three books are part of a projected quincunx<\/em>, or five-part series of novels, each one playing with a different genre. The last two books in the series will engage with the conventions of the ghost story and the Harlequin romance respectively. Once completed, the series promises to be one of the most amibitious and unusual works that any Canadian writer has produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Munro Beattie Lecture featuring Andr\u00e9 Alexis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When: <\/strong>Thursday, January 26, 2017<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time: <\/strong>7 pm<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Location: <\/strong>Azrieli Theatre, Carleton University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a free public lecture; all are welcome. Seats are not reserved, so plan to arrive early. A reception will follow the talk. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dean of FASS and the Department of English are delighted to announce that the 2016-2017 Munro Beattie Lecture will be delivered by acclaimed Canadian writer\u2014and former Carleton student\u2014Andr\u00e9 Alexis. The Munro Beattie Lecture was launched in 1985 to honour the English department\u2019s founding chair and his contributions to literary studies in Canada. 2017 marks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[26,305],"tags":[301,302,303,304,109],"class_list":["post-21328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-munro-beatie-lecture","tag-andre-alexis","tag-carleton-english","tag-fifteen-dogs","tag-giller-prize","tag-munro-beattie-lecture"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21328"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34122,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21328\/revisions\/34122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}