Praise for Off the Record
The authors' reflections illustrate the complex interplay between craft and intuition that goes into writing fiction ... and provide revealing case studies of how stories move from inspiration to published product. Aspiring writers will be enlightened.
-Publisher's Weekly
Praise for John Metcalf
[Metcalf's] talent is generous, hectoring, huge, and remarkable.
-Washington Post
[Metcalf's] exacting eye and his ongoing willingness to call out what he considers substandard, inert, or deadening in our literary culture has earned him opprobrium ... One need not agree with everything [he] says to find much to gnaw on in his analyses of the various ways literary technique and style ... are too often downgraded or outright ignored. ... While it's amusing to wrestle with the temerity and gall of Metcalf's settled esthetic standards ... his achievement in translating this approach into practice as mentor and guiding light is invaluable and we are all in his debt.
-Steven W. Beattie, Toronto Star
[Metcalf] deliver[s] a layered and textured narrative highlighting a wide range of writing and writers, one that immerses the reader into the soul of what writing, and thus literature, is supposed to be. And in this, he has succeeded.
-Ottawa Review of Books
Hilarious, touching and delightful ... brilliant concision and understated humor.
-Los Angeles Times
John Metcalf has written some of the very best stories ever published in this country.
-Alice Munro
In the past few decades, Canada has won a reputation as a prolific producer of high-quality short stories. Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant and John Metcalf are among those who have proven themselves masters of the difficult form.
-Maclean's
A master stylist confidently at work in his favoured form.
-Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature: Second Edition
Masterful ... Harsh reality, hope, and caricature mingle in this tour de force.
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
