Bøker av Donald S. Hair

Professor Hair draws on a lifetime of scholarship and teaching in this brief yet insightful introduction to Charles Dickens's novel Little Dorrit. Both readers coming to the novel for the first time and those returning to it will find their enjoyment and understanding enhanced by his analysis of how Dickens uses character, plot and atmosphere to drive home his message of social protest. And that message is as relevant today as it was when Little Dorrit was first published more than a century and a half ago, for in the novel (as Hair points out) "Dickens is exposing and attacking that most difficult of social ills to define precisely, the one that people sometimes refer to as the 'system'... 'Nobody's fault' was Dickens's original title for the novel, and it is of course ironic: something that is 'nobody's fault' is everybody's fault."

As the author notes in his introduction, this fascinating and insightful book is "family history with a context." Placing the lives of his parents, John Hair and Alice Runnalls, at the centre of the narrative, Dr. Hair explores the history and culture of Southwestern Ontario, that great peninsula of fertile farmland lying between Lake Erie and Lake Huron.Dubbed "Souwesto" in the 1960s by artist Greg Curnoe and playwright James Reaney, the region was home to the kind of people that Alice Munro writes about in her short stories---people mostly of Scots-Irish descent; Protestant; practical, hard-working people attached to the land, defining their community as their school section and their social milieu as their rural Methodist or Presbyterian church.Souwesto Lives tells their story, beginning in the first days of European settlement, continuing through the clearing of "the bush" and into the twentieth century, when the coming of the telephone and rural electrification marked the beginning of social and technological changes that would change the area forever. It is a story of the movement from country to city, from family farm to suburban lot, told with verve and affection.Natives of Souwesto, historians and genealogists, and the general reader all will find much to treasure in this detailed portrait of a region, its people, and a family.

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable coming of age, not only for Canadian literature but also for Canadian universities. As a professor of English at the University of Western Ontario, Donald S. Hair experienced both of these transformations firsthand.In this engaging memoir, Hair looks back over his long career. He discusses his encounters with (and impressions of) such prominent figures in Canadian literature as Margaret Atwood, Stan Dragland, Timothy Findley, Jay Macpherson, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Al Purdy, James Reaney, and many others. The book also provides insight into the evolution of Canadian higher education, including the ongoing battle between advocates of a teaching-centred approach and those who viewed research as the foremost priority of the academy. Along the way, Hair discusses the contributions of such renowned literary scholars as Northrop Frye, F.E.L. Priestley, Carl Klinck, and A.S.P. Woodhouse.The 1960s and '70s also saw an efflorescence of cultural activity across Canada, including London, Ontario and the surrounding counties of southwestern Ontario. Hair's descriptions of the area's arts scene during the heyday of what came to be called the London Regionalism movement open a window into another era, as do his descriptions of such leading artists in that movement as Greg Curnoe and Jack Chambers. Also central to the narrative is Hair's friendship with Governor-General's Award-winning poet and playwright James Reaney, with whom Hair taught for many years at Western University.The story recounted in A Professor's Life holds (to borrow the author's own words) "the basic appeal of the life story that everyone has to tell" as well as "the appeal of the historical context in which a life is lived, the kind of ap­peal that answers the question 'What was it like, to live then, to work in that place and time?'" The book is, in the end, a wholly absorbing account of a meaningful life well-lived.