A treasure chest of exceptional stories by one of Canadas classic authorsall now available in one volume.
Ernest Buckler, best known as the author of the Canadian classic, The Mountain and the Valley, never achieved the lasting fame he deserved. His first story was published in Esquire, a significant American literary magazine known for publishing leading writers such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sinclair Lewis. Over the years, nearly forty more of Buckler’s short stories were published in several popular magazines, including Maclean’s where his story “The Quarrel” won first prize for fiction.
In Thanks for Listening: Stories and Short Fictions by Ernest Buckler, Marta Dvořák gathers together many of those stories as well as some previously unpublished pieces. At times she has chosen to include the fuller, original versions, and has reinstated some of the lost passages that were cut from stories to fit popular magazine requirements.
Ernest Buckler’s writing is rooted in the magic of the ordinary. He celebrates the land and its community, and sensuously recreates a paradise — almost a Garden of Eden. Buckler’s American editors were right in believing that no one evoked the lost world of North Americas agrarian past better than Ernest Buckler.

Marta Dvorák is professor of Canadian and postcolonial literatures in English at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, former associate editor of The International Journal of Canadian Studies, and editor of Commonwealth Essays and Studies. Focusing her research on (post)modernism and cross-culturalism, she has authored and edited books ranging from Ernest Buckler: Rediscovery and Reassessment (WLU Press, 2001) to Tropes and Territories: Short Fiction, Postcolonial Readings, and Canadian Writings in Context (co-ed. W.H. New) and The Faces of Carnival in Anita DesaiÂ’s In Custody.

Ernest Buckler's profile page

Ernest Buckler (1908-1984) was born in West Dalhousie, Nova Scotia. He spent most of his life writing and farming in the Annapolis Valley, and died in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia.

Marta Dvořák is professor of Canadian and postcolonial literatures in English at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, former associate editor of The International Journal of Canadian Studies, and editor of Commonwealth Essays and Studies. Focusing her research on (post)modernism and cross-culturalism, she has authored and edited books ranging from Ernest Buckler: Rediscovery and Reassessment (WLU Press, 2001) to Tropes and Territories: Short Fiction, Postcolonial Readings, and Canadian Writings in Context (co-ed. W.H. New) and The Faces of Carnival in Anita Desai's In Custody.

Marta Dvořák's profile page

These are stories that will break your heart and light up your mind. Dvořák's selection reveals the brilliance of Buckler's vision and craft.

J.A. Wainwright, Dalhousie University

These are stories that will break your heart and light up your mind. Dvořák's selection reveals the brilliance of Buckler's vision and craft.

J.A. Wainwright, Dalhousie University

Thanks for Listening gathers together more than 35 short fictions from Buckler's published and unpublished work, reminding us of his strong hold on our understanding of rural life....Part of the significance of this new volume is that we can see how painstakingly careful Buckler was about his fictional craft.

David Staines, University of Ottawa, Globe and Mail, August 7, 2004, 2004 September

Buckler [has been] criticized [for] accepting massive revisions, in order to be published in popular magazines. It is fitting that Dvořák has restored...these works

Anne Burke, Prairie Trust Journal, 2005 January

The range here, including unpublished pieces...allows us to recover a more textured picture of Buckler....Given [Buckler's] obvious contribution to the modernist story in Canada, it is time to give him a place in the national short-fiction canon.

Laurie Kruk, Canadian Literature, 189, Summer 2006, 2007 January

[T]he opportunity this carefully constructed anthology provides scholars to understand the range and depth of Buckler's work is exciting. More exciting, however, is the opportunity it provides a new generation to read Buckler's work.

Kevin Flynn, Educational Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2005 April