The Loved and the Lost

To be compared with Chekhov, to be compared with Turgenev, that's what the greatest man of American letters of our time, Edmund Wilson, said when this Morley Callaghan masterpiece appeared in the early fifties. With the story in Montreal, young Peggy Sanderson has become socially unacceptable because ofher association with black musicians in nightclubs. The black men think she must be involved sexually, the black women fear or loathe her, yet her direct, almost spiritual manner is at variance with her reputation. A socially acceptable Jim McAlpine falls under the sway of her personality; he becomes fascinated by her quest, he falls in love, and as a consequence lives are ruined and careers broken, yet overall the feel of charity that is a hallmark of Callaghan's tone overrides this terrible tragic story.

Morley Callaghan was a novelist and short story writer. He is the author of numerous books, including A Literary Life, The New Yorker Stories, Such Is My Beloved, and That Summer in Paris. He is the recipient of the Governor General’s Award and was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. David Staines is a literary critic, award-winning writer, editor, and an English professor at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of the essay collection The Canadian Imagination, editor of the scholarly Journal of Canadian Poetry, and general editor of McClelland and Stewart's New Canadian Library. He has published a number of major essay collections, including He lives in Ottawa, Ontario. Edmund Wilson was an author and one of the most prominent social and literary critics of the 20th century and the recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal for Literature.