SOURCE: “The Deflationary Structure in Metcalf's Novellas,” in Malahat Review, Vol. 70, March, 1985, pp. 118–30.

In the following essay, Garebian addresses Metcalf's recurring tendency to end his stories and novellas with defeat or wry resignation.

The dominant structure in John Metcalf's witty novellas is a deflationary winding-down which suggests the whole complex of Metcalf's bruised sensibility. This structure is not by any means restricted to the shorter fiction. Metcalf's satiric novels, which often become incantations of anxiety, move downwards to defeat or wry resignation. Going Down Slow (1972), an apprentice work about the illicit and problematic affair between a Montreal English teacher and a female student, exposes all the raw, aching tensions in the anarchic male protagonist and winds down—as its title suggests—to emotional and psychic ruin. General Ludd (1980) offers us a hero who, quite apoplectic over the corruptions of culture, is driven to dangerous acts of destruction. The...