The Myth Alive

When Don Gutteridge retired from academia in 1993, he intended to say my farewell by publishing a selection of the forty essays he had written over a long career. He gathered them together and gave them a title: The Myth Alive. However, other projects soon began competing for his time. He published two memoir novels in quick succession: Summer's Idyll (1993) and Winter's Descent (1995). Then as a last pedagogical hurrah, he wrote a small volume on teaching theory (Teaching English: 1999). Then it was back to novel writing with Bewilderment (2000) and finally fulltime work on the Marc Edwards mysteries (twelve titles). The Myth Alive was eventually forgotten. When he took it out for a belated look earlier this year, he found that the subject matter, though many years old, was still relevant today because it deals with questions of a literary/critical nature: how poems get made, the uses of history in literary works, the evolution of a Canadian mythology, the question of intention and so on. He trusts that they are as relevant today as when they were first written.