Those amusing little Canadian magazines -- so nice in a fight

We imagine that Kim Jernigan, editor of The New Quarterly (TNQ) and Daniel Wells, editor of Canadian Notes and Queries (CNQ) expected to stir some controversy with their Salon Des Refusés joint issue(s) that was critical of the choices made in the Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories. The two editors disagreed with the selections made by novelist Jane Urquhart and published 20 people they thought should have been included. (From such relatively small acorns grow mighty oaks of controversy, apparently.)

The two might not have expected the controversy to reach readers of the Los Angeles Times. Apparently alerted to the contretemps by a August 27 column in Maclean's magazine by Paul Wells, this weekend one of the paper's blogs posted a story headed "Normally nice Canadians get nasty in literary feud".

Nor, we imagine, are they accustomed to being pitted one against another because of their style of introduction. Writer Carolyn Kellog linked to (Paul) Wells's article in concluding that CNQ's editor made a "stinging" attack on Urquhart while TNQ's approach was described as "warmer". What (Paul) Wells (no relation) actually said was:

Canadian Notes and Queries and The New Quarterly have different temperaments. The New Quarterly is gentle, nurturing, celebratory. It makes friends easily. CNQ can do the nurturing thing, but its burgeoning reputation has more to do with its ability to get fierce and snarky.

The illustration for the item in the LA Times was a picture of a pillow fight in Nathan Phillips Square. So Times readers will be relieved that, at bottom we're still really, really nice.