Timothy Findley's Novels Between Ethics and Postmodernism

Book excerpt: Timothy Findley (1930-2002) is one of the most important contemporary Canadian writers. His novels have been classified as postmodern, exhibiting characteristic features such as parody, historiographic metafiction, and hybrid genres. This classification of Findley as a postmodern writer, however, largely neglects the fact that Findley is deeply committed to the exploration of certain ethical and political themes. Recurring topics in his work are, for instance, fascism, environmental concerns, and the problem of responsibility. Sparked off by the fascinating question of how postmodernism and ethics can be reconciled at all, and inspired by the so-called ethical turn in the literary theory of the 1990s, this study supplies a closer look at Findley's ethics with regard to its postmodern potential. A detailed analysis of five of his novels (The Wars, Famous Last Words, Not Wanted on the Voyage, The Telling of Lies and Headhunter) explores the ethical dimension of Findleys work and its consequences for his categorization as a postmodern writer.