George (formerly Doug) Fetherling has been a fixture on the CanLit scene for nearly half a century. During a prolific and wide-ranging career that has included significant ties to Toronto, Kingston, and Vancouver, Fetherling has published poems, novels, biographical works, and essays, while also toiling as a journalist and a publisher. He seemingly has been friend – or, at the very least, acquaintance – to anyone and everyone worth knowing in Canadian letters. His newly released journals, covering a 30-year period beginning in 1975, sketch an exhausting itinerary of literary events and outings, including a regular rotation of lunches with novelist Margaret Atwood (identified as Peggy A), columnist Robert Fulford (Bob F), publisher Anne Collins (Anne C), and many others.

For all this, Fetherling’s introspective journal casts its author as the spurned outsider. One typical entry reads, “Only by living in Vancouver, where I’m despised as a Torontonian, can I be accepted as a Torontonian at all – in contrast to Toronto itself, where I’m despised as a foreigner.” This sounds odd coming from a man who seldom seems to take midday nourishment on his own, who has published more than 30 books, whose influential benefactors have included Massey College master John Fraser and former newspaper bigwig Neil Reynolds, and who has enjoyed his share of writers’ residencies and arts-council jury appointments. Oh, and not to forget that he has managed to find a publisher for his journals. Most Canadian writers would kill to be so ostracized.

There are informative tidbits here and there. One is the news that Bob Rae, as premier of Ontario, tried to persuade his old pal, Michael Ignatieff, to take up the reins of TVOntario. Otherwise, these scribblings mostly comprise complimentary or unflattering asides about an array of Canadian book-world figures, from the famous to the marginal, as well as regular morning-after synopses of the author’s nocturnal dream life. The book’s presumed audience is readers chiefly interested in sifting through its pages in search of their own names, as well as those of their friends and enemies. – Vit Wagner, a reviewer in Toronto.