dumbfoundry

DAVID Layton once caught his famous father, the poet Irving Layton, peeing in the bathroom sink.

He was a child of 10 at the time. David, not Irving, of course. Irving was putatively an adult. [...]

David Layton returns to his urination motif in the final pages of Motion Sickness. Now a married adult, he takes Irving on a summer outing. The old man, frail and senile, decides to relieve himself against a wall in plain view of passersby.

"My father," David writes, "was a man who pissed where he wanted to."

From a son, the perfect epitaph for Irving Layton.

Embraced by the media, shunned by the prudes of Can Lit, worshipped by lovers, reviled by feminists, loved by his students, Irving Layton was the only household name associated with Canadian poetry in the 1960s and '70s. Leonard Cohen (who had been his discovery) was a pop guru outside the discourse of Canadian letters. Al Purdy minded the fort of Canadian idiom, respected but low-keyed. Margaret Atwood was the priestess of the culturati. But Layton was the public figure who introduced the poet to the airwaves, available always to rant on national television about the self-defeating ways of the country he loved, eager to rail against the WASP witchery that nagged his meteoric presence from day one; above all, ready to stand up as the voice of the unequivocal to both poetasters and philistines alike. [...]

This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy on Sunday, January 08, 2006 at 1:44 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.