Farley [Hardcover]

Brilliant storyteller, impassioned environmentalist, outspoken social activist--you’d have to cross Margaret Atwood with David Suzuki to find a Canadian whose mythic role in shaping the country's national identity rivals that of Farley Mowat. The fact that Mowat is officially banned from entry to the U.S. simply clinches his iconic status. In Farley, biographer James King (The Life of Margaret Laurence, Jack: A Life with Writers) presents the hard-drinking, womanizing, melancholic, and occasionally cranky literary giant warts and all, without ever allowing room to question Mowat's heroic clout.

King's staunch defence of Mowat is itself a loaded stance, since a highly publicized 1996 Saturday Night magazine cover story (by John Goddard, author of Last Stand of the Lubicon Cree) revealed Mowat's penchant for fictionalizing fact--notably in his 1952 debut, People of the Deer, and 1963's Never Cry Wolf (the basis of a Disney movie). Though the allegations cast a lasting pall over Mowat's credibility, King deftly slays the dragon by pointing out that exactly the same charges were made in a 1952 review in The Beaver (a publication owned by Hudson's Bay Company, one of the agencies fingered in Mowat's exposé of the plight of the disenfranchised Ihalmiut people of the Arctic interior). Journalists as prominent as Scott Young (also writing in Saturday Night, in 1952) promptly leapt to Mowat's defence, and by the mid-'70s Mowat was able to write, "When Truman Capote 'discovered' the middle ground [in the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood] it became respectable and acquired a name so that, at last, it could be charted."

Farley's narrative pace fizzles after the death of Angus Mowat--the war hero, librarian, would-be writer father whose closeness to his son (Farley helped conceal Angus's bigamy from his long-suffering mother) shaped many of the latter's life choices. And King actually soft-peddles the impact Mowat's books have had in publicizing some major issues on an international scale: the barbaric conditions of the seal hunt (Wake of the Great Sealers), the vulnerability of whales (A Whale for the Killing), the possibility that Europeans had pre-Columbian settlements on Newfoundland (Westviking and The Farfarers), and the murder of primatologist Dian Fossey (Virunga), to name a few. Instead, he concentrates on championing Mowat's literary virtues, ensuring that readers remember Farley Mowat as the great stylist whose wryly humorous The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float, and overtly autobiographical Born Naked would earn him a spot as one of the 20th century's most significant writers, all polemics aside. --Deirdre Hanna

Mowat, the octogenarian writer who has probably sold more books than any other Canadian author, is for many not an easy person to like. English professor King, the author of a biography of Virginia Woolf among others, generally gives Mowat the benefit of the doubt in this authorized life. Mowat, whose 38 books include novels, wilderness adventures and chronicles of indigenous peoples' struggle to survive, has been accused of exaggerations or outright falsehoods in his nonfiction books. King recognizes the existence of some blurred lines, but suggests that Mowat's books relate essential truths even if they stray from strict adherence to fact. Mowat lived all over Canada during childhood as his cold, eccentric librarian father sought new experiences; Mowat continued his treks as an adult, moving where he wanted when he wanted, demonstrating less than full sensitivity to the needs of his two wives. The second, Claire, stuck with him, though; King's lively portrayal of her is one of the biography's strengths. Mowat's moodiness can be dizzying, as King suggests by calling the section covering the years 1977-1984 "Prophet of Doom," then titling the section from 1984 through today "Keeper of the Faith." King makes the case that Mowat's legacy is on balance positive, as he has provided millions of readers with a blueprint for global salvation in a polluting age. The answer is basically this-those living on the land or at sea must live in peace with nature, and must win over those who are not doing so. King suggests convincingly that Mowat has found redemption for his personal sins through his writing. B&w photos.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

One of Canada's most popular writers over the past 50 years, Mowat has been both a comical exaggerator and a heated critic of his subjects, many of which derive from his affinity to animals, and alarm about the conditions of Canada's Arctic peoples. Since most of his topics emerge from personal experience--his classic The Dog Who Wouldn't Be (1957) risibly exalts his boyhood canine Mutt--this biography recounts Mowat's search for source material. King describes Mowat's travels in the Arctic, his sailing adventures, his lengthy habitations on Canada's geocultural fringes, and the badinage contained in his letters to publishers to ensure they would contract for his next book. In addition, King, allowed access to Mowat's papers and friends, opens the writer's personal life to his readers, who will encounter an unedifying incident or two in his relations with women, and his extremely tight tie to his father. In the lives of litterateurs, complicated equals interesting, a quality that King capably accretes, letter by letter, in this honest account. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

This moving biography gives us a sensitive insight into the complicated life of...one of the most brilliant writers of our time. -- The Lethbridge Herald, November 23, 2002

According to his father, Angus, himself a character of some repute, Farley Mowat was conceived either under the grandstand at the Canadian National Exhibition, or in a green canoe in the Bay of Quinte. And as one wag commented, “That’s quite an amazing feat…in any color canoe.” A born storyteller, Mowat is loved the world over for his more than 30 books that have sold more than eight million copies and have been translated into 22 languages. He is a writer with a flair for the comic and a penchant for dramatic irony, his style effortless and elegant. His bestsellers, including Never Cry Wolf, have focused the world’s attention on our fragile ecosystem, passionately urging us to protect and preserve the environment. He is, perhaps above all, a true Canadian who speaks eloquently to the evasive Canadian identity, a man who knows that Canadians still harbor a deep and caring connection to the natural world.

In a sensitive and deeply insightful biography that will become the most talked about book of the season, James King artfully marries the public and private Mowat, often revealing startling new information about the writer and his life. Behind the brash and cantankerous façade—a persona Mowat says was dreamed up by Jack McClelland and him during one very boozy lunch—there is also another, little known side of Mowat.

In a surprising and illuminating narrative, King unmasks this shy, private and often troubled man, hugely influenced by his late father, whose expectations and infidelities had a profound and lasting effect on every aspect of his life. As King notes, Farley is very much a father and son story, an account of a relationship which, for both men, ran the gamut from touching to destructive, but in the end, was ultimately transformative.

King also looks at Mowat’s failed first marriage, his debilitating periods of writer’s block, and his growing anger and despair with the state of our environment. He traces the highs and lows of Mowat’s career, his skirmishes with the media—“I never let the facts stand in the way of truth”—and the roots of his activism and love of nature. The “real” Mowat turns out to be a man even more fascinating than the legend he has crafted.

King’s combination of meticulous research and insightful commentary is augmented by hours of interviews Mowat granted to the biographer; unprecedented access to his embargoed papers; and an invitation to talk to both friends and enemies. Farley reveals an “exuberant, mercurial, kindly, tormented, melancholic, gregarious and generous” man. And it shows him as a Canadian icon who has dedicated himself to writing about our precarious relationship with the world and its other inhabitants—a goal which has proven redemptive not only for Mowat, but for all of his readers. An unforgettable biography, Farley is a major contribution to Canadian literature.

Acclaim for James King

“[King] is now the best of our literary biographers. Jack is many things. It’s a fascinating dissection of an industry, and a lucid window on Canadian culture and its politics. . . [and] what’s more, a refreshingly good story, funny and telling and full of surprises.” —Quill & Quire (starred review)

“…enormously moving…It is difficult to overstate how profoundly sad The Life of Margaret Laurence is. King presents her as such a potent mix of strengths and frailties…” —Maclean’s

James King who has been a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, enjoys a distinguished career as an academic and popular writer of both non-fiction and fiction. In 1991, he was shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award for The Last Modern: A Life of Herbert Read. In 1996, he published his acclaimed biography, Virginia Woolf. The Life of Margaret Laurence was a finalist for the 1997 CBA Non-fiction Book of the Year and became a national bestseller. His most recent biography of Jack McClelland, Jack: A Life with Writers, received rave reviews. Farley is his eighth biography. James King lives in Hamilton with his wife, three cats and a whippet named Jack.