Special Collections

Abstract

Rudy Wiebe has mocked the "personal fallacy" in literary criticism, which "sees every work of art as arising directly out of the artist's experience" and sanctions "a great deal of snooping" into his "life, surroundings and digestion while he was writing."1 In contrast, Wiebe insists that novels "acquire a life and character of their own, independent of and quite beyond the artist himself" (VL, 40). They are self-sufficient. However, he would agree that even in their independence, they can be suffused with the passions and preferences of their authors. Without being autobiographical, they will testify to a background, especially one as unique and forceful as Wiebe's. Paradoxically, a writer is most fully present in his work when he completely effaces himself; or as he says: "as a writer, writing, when you are most profoundly yourself you are no longer yourself."2 Personal traits are assimilated and transformed into a well-crafted fiction. Therefore we are justified in snooping into Wiebe's life if only to see how he has digested diverse influences and used them to give his novels vigorous and complex personalities of their own.