Hugh Hood Summary

Hugh Hood is recognized as one of Canada's most versatile, sophisticated, and aesthetically selfconscious fiction writers. His short stories, sketches, and novels demonstrate an encyclopedic knowledge... Read more

Critical Essay by Ernest Buckler "Whoever heard any talk about painting that made sense?" asks a character in ["White Figure, White Ground"]. One might answer, "Hug... Read more

Critical Essay by Kent Thompson Hugh Hood is an intellectual writer. Moreover, he's a very ambitious one. In blunt terms: he's a mind-stretcher. In fact, Hood attempts dimensions in his... Read more

Critical Essay by William H. New The sustained work of Hugh Hood … provides a connection between the realistic and stylistically experimental…. [White Figure, White Ground] is imbued wi... Read more

Critical Essay by Kildare Dobbs [It's] evident from the stories in [Hood's] first book, Flying A Red Kite, that he has knocked about a good deal in the world outside the universities&#x... Read more

Critical Essay by Hallvard Dahlie The opening paragraph of [A New Athens] reflects what has come to be a Hood trademark: the transformation of circumstantial detail and self into a kind of mystical e... Read more

Critical Essay by John Orange Hugh Hood's style, including diction, characterization, symbolism, and tone, is very difficult to deal with in a general way. He is a very eclectic stylist and he... Read more

Critical Essay by Michael Bliss Most readers have passed judgement on Hugh Hood's great work-in-progress, The New Age/Le nouveau siècle, on the basis of the first three novels, The Swin... Read more

Critical Essay by Anthony Robertson Around the Mountain is subtitled, 'Scenes from Montreal Life'. A collection of essays, some of them apparently non-fiction fiction, about the varied ... Read more

Critical Essay by Eugene Mcnamara [The Fruit Man, the Meat Man & the Manager] shows that [Hood] knows perfectly well where he is and what he is doing. The stories are carefully varied, like a bon... Read more

Critical Essay by Patricia A. Morley You Can't Get There From Here … [focuses on] the freedom of societies, and the problematic survival of indigenous cultures assaulted by Western tech... Read more

Critical Essay by J. R. (tim) Struthers In his imagination Hugh Hood has outlined a twelve-book epic on Canadian life entitled The New Age/Le nouveau siècle, which he intends to complete by th... Read more

In the following excerpt, Garebian surveys the critical reaction to Hood's short fiction as well as the defining characteristics of his fiction and nonfiction. Tradition and Milieu George Wo... Read more

In the following essay, Copoloff-Mechanic explores the influence of a Romantic aesthetic on Hood's work, especially the stories comprising Flying a Red Kite. When Hood's first collect... Read more

In the following assessment of The Isolation Booth, Mills maintains that although the collection contains “a fair amount of interesting and diverting material, it is, generally speaking, of low... Read more

In the following review of Flying a Red Kite, Lane deems the stories in the collection uneven and awkward. It's hard to know just how to judge this collection of short stories and other pros... Read more

In the following essay, Latham provides a mixed review of Dark Glasses. Oscar Wilde warned that “all art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.... Read more

In the following essay, Mathews explores the “Christian aspect” of Hood's short fiction and the novel A New Athens. In an exchange of correspondence with John Mills published i... Read more

In the following review, Keith maintains that None Genuine Without This Signature offers precision of detail, delicacy of nuance, and firmness of structure. Is Hugh Hood important? If so, why? T... Read more