Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada

Ray Smith

Published by House of Anansi, Toronto, 1969

About this Item

Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada; Ray Smith; House of Anansi, Toronto, 1969. Ray Smith, born James Raymond Smith, (1941 - 2019) was a Canadian novelist and short story writer. He was born on 12 December 1941 in Mabou, Inverness County, Cape Breton and educated at Dalhousie University, Halifax (B.A. 1963), and at Concordia University, Montreal (M.A. 1985). He worked as an instructor in English at Dawson College, Montreal, until his retirement in 2007. In the early 1970s he joined with authors Clark Blaise, Raymond Fraser, Hugh Hood, and John Metcalf to form the celebrated Montreal Story Tellers Fiction Performance Group. For more than three decades, Ray Smith has occupied a distinctive position on the margins of the Canadian literary scene. His work is characterized by an interest in experimentation, but there is no discernible pattern of development. Each of his books is markedly different from the others, and none fits comfortably into the standard academic overviews of Canadian literature. His first book, this book, Cape Breton Is the Thought Control Centre of Canada (short fiction), is one of the earliest Canadian examples of experimental writing in the international tradition and is widely acknowledged as a milestone of early Canadian postmodernism. (Of American writers, perhaps Donald Barthelme provides the closest analogue.) The relentless, witty interrogation of short story form underscores a parallel skepticism about perceived truths in other areas of life. This collection was reissued by the Porcupine's Quill in the late 1980s. In August 2010, literary critics Alex Good and Stephen W. Beattie included Smith in their list of the ten most underrated writers in Canada, published on the National Post's website. This was one of the first books published by the House of Anansi. This is evident by the fact that the dust jacket of the book is 10mm higher than the book itself. This is why the top of the dust jacket is so tattered. My guess is that the major booksellers of the day likely would not have carried this book in stock. It was likely a very small print run and distributed by Smith himself and boutique booksellers. There were no copies on the internet prior to our posting of our copy. This book, 135 pages is in near-fine condition in a good dust jacket that is in a protective mylar wrap. An extremely scarce, important book of Canadian literature. Seller Inventory # 2281aa

Bibliographic Details

Title: Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of...

Publisher: House of Anansi, Toronto

Publication Date: 1969

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Good