“Generic instability is undeniably a fundamental characteristic of postmodern writing,” as Marta Dvořák argues. Given this instability, one might assume that genre theory no longer functions as a useful tool for interpreting the novel. However, Fredric Jameson argues that traditional genres do not disappear from postmodern fiction, so much as resurface in dissonant states of juxtaposition. Genre analysis takes on a heightened importance in this context because it illuminates the complex ways in which authors break down literary codes and force readers to negotiate overlapping frames of generic and cultural reference. This intersection of formal and cultural concerns can be illustrated by surveying two prominent traditions of crossgenre experimentation in Canada. The first combines lyric with novelistic techniques, while the second, which evolves from a different set of circumstances, yet enters into dialogue with the poet-novelist tradition, adapts dramatic devices to the novel. By compelling these dissimilar genres to intermingle, the authors illustrate how cultures interact in Canada through form as well as declarative statements.

Leonard Cohen

The work of Leonard Cohen exemplifies the poet-novelist phenomenon. A student of the novelist Hugh MacLennan at McGill University, and a Jewish writer in English who revered the poet-novelist A. M. Klein as a surrogate father figure, Cohen produced two landmark novels about crossing cultural solitudes in the 1960s. The Favourite Game (1963) depicts the attempts of Lawrence Breavman to break out of his Jewish Westmount enclave. Breavman courts WASP and Québécois women, immigrates briefly to the United States, and celebrates and satirizes his Jewish heritage.