Describing himself as “a self-hating Jew from Ottawa,” Matt Cohen lived a writing life governed by anomaly, paradox, and contradiction. In short, he was a true Canadian. Always the outsider, Cohen was a highly professional writer to whom the cliché “a writer’s writer” applied, as he seemed to have more writers-as-readers than public or critical audience.

Cohen was also a writer of many voices, something else that worked against finding a wider audience. Professors and literary critics are often obsessed with the idea of writers finding their supposedly authentic voice and do not take kindly to multi-voiced writers, who are difficult to classify and teach to students. And then there was Cohen’s tragic early death in 1999, at the age of 57, just after he had entered his most prolific period.

Uncommon Ground is a celebration of Cohen as friend and writer, a collection of 34 essays, reminiscences, excerpts, and interviews edited by Graeme Gibson, Wayne Grady, Dennis Lee, and Priscila Uppal. Had this long overdue homage been published while Cohen was alive, it might have gone some way toward alleviating the intense alienation and bitterness out of which he wrote but which failed to taint his writing.

There is a wonderful reminiscence of Cohen in Paris by Stephen O’Shea, and two particularly insightful contributions that deserve mention. Margaret Atwood’s “The Wrong Box” is a brilliant, sensitive essay that goes some way toward establishing Cohen as a realist, hyperrealist, and fabulist. Atwood sees Cohen as a “Rumplestiltskin of a writer … an outsider and grumbling isolate.”

David Homel’s “Am I Famous Yet?: Acceptance and Anti-Semitism in Typing” is a provocative and engaging piece. I don’t agree with Homel’s central thesis that Matt Cohen wasn’t accepted in Canadian writing circles because he was Jewish, but this essay is certain to arouse controversy and discussion in the Canadian literary establishment – and that can only be a good thing.