Montreal Standard Time The Early Journalism of Mavis Gallant
Montreal Standard Time is drawn from Mavis Gallant's columns in The Montreal Standard during her six-year tenure at the newspaper, beginning in 1944, when she was 22. Gallant reported on an extraordinary range of subjects: labour issues, mining, existentialism, immigration, comedy, mercy killings, feminism, and suffrage. Her journalism is peopled by a rich cast of characters: writers, painters, politicians, criminals, street kids, war brides, refugees, and unwed mothers. Eighty years after they first saw the light, the columns remain as fresh as ever. Written with a precision, flair, and wit that would become her trademark, Montreal Standard Time is journalism of the first order. Taken together, the pieces create a remarkable portrait of Montreal in the eventful years during and after WW2, and of a young woman, fiercely independent and politically active, making her way through it. The book also corrects a long-standing gap in the Gallant oeuvre. Her celebrated reporting on the student riots in Paris in 1968 and on the Gabrielle Russier case are brilliant examples of her in-depth journalism. But that, and her insightful reviews and occasional pieces, have already been collected. Her earliest reporting from The Montreal Standard , however, has never circulated or appeared in book form. Edited by Neil Besner, Marta Dvorak, and Bill Richardson, with a preface by Mary K. MacLeod, Montreal Standard Time is indispensable not only for the light it throws on Gallant's time and place, but in how it reveals a major writer coming into her powers.
