Levine, Norman
LEVINE, NORMAN
LEVINE, NORMAN (1923– ), Canadian writer. Levine was born in Ottawa. His parents, Annie (Gurevich) and Moses Mordecai Levine, were Polish-Jewish immigrants. Levine was educated at York Street Public School and the High School of Commerce. During World War ii, he served as an rcaf flying officer, then attended McGill University, where he graduated with a B.A. (1948) and M.A. (1949). Determined on a career as a professional author he settled in England, where he lived mostly in St. Ives, Cornwall, from 1949 to 1980. Later he took up residence in Toronto, and then moved back to Europe, where he lived in France, and finally returned to England. Levine was awarded a Canada Council Fellowship (1959) and Canada Council Arts Awards (1969, 1971).
Levine published three volumes of poetry: Myssium (1948), The Tightrope Walker (1950), and I Walk by the Harbour (1976) – but his reputation derives primarily from his fiction. These include the novels The Angled Road (1952) and From a Seaside Town (1970) and his collections of short stories: One Way Ticket (1961), I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well (1971), Selected Stories (1975), Thin Ice (1979), Why Do You Live So Far Away? (1984), Champagne Barn (1984), Something Happened Here (1991), and The Ability to Forget (2003). His travel book, Canada Made Me, which describes his experiences on a trip across Canada, appeared in the British edition in 1958; adversely reviewed in Canada, it did not obtain a Canadian publisher until 1979.
A self-conscious stylist, Levine fashioned a personal signature for the representation of his autobiographical fiction which originates in the remembered past of urban Jewish poverty and alienation. Typically, his storytelling method involves a narrator who observes the world through bifocal lenses, simultaneously witnessing an emotionally barren present juxtaposed with a past which is richly remembered but irretrievably lost. The hero is often solitary, emotionally cut off from others, unable to bridge the gap between himself and those closest to him.
Levine was the subject of several video documentaries, including Norman Levine Lived Here, produced by the cbc (1970), and Norman Levine's St. Ives, produced by the bbc (1972).
[Mervin Butovsky (2nd ed.)]