God's Plenty

W. J. Keith (William John Keith) was born in 1934 in England. After school he was called up for two years National Service (1953-5), where he taught as a Sergeant-Instructor in the Royal Army Education Corps both in Sussex and with the British Army of the Rhine. From 1955-1961 he obtained degrees in English from Cambridge and the University of Toronto, where he then taught for nearly a quarter-century. Now a Professor Emeritus, Keith was editor of the University of Toronto Quarterly from 1976 to 1985, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1979. He is the author of A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada, Epic Fiction: The Art of Rudy Wiebe (1981), Canadian Literature in English (1985), and Introducing Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman (1989).

Contents Preface 11 Abbreviations 16 1 Biographical 17 2 Critical Considerations 23 3 Starting from the States: 37 A Short Walk in the Rain, The Isolation Booth 4 Displaying His Wares: 51 Flying a Red Kite 5 Anatomy of a City: 77 Around the Mountain 6 Short Stories or Short-Story Collection: 107 The Fruit Man, the Meat Man & the Manager 7 The Morality of Vision: 120 Dark Glasses 8 Signs and Portents: 139 None Genuine Without This Signature 9 Every Piece Different: 160 August Nights 10 Art in Crisis: 178 Five New Facts About Giorgione 11 Miscellany of Tones: 192 You'll Catch Your Death 12 Late Harvest: 209 After All! Check-List of Short Fiction 231 Other Works Cited 239 Index 245