Eric McCormack

Eric Patrick McCormack (20 September 1938 – 9 May 2023) was a Scottish-born Canadian author. He was known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction, gothic horror and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as Inspecting the Vaults, The Paradise Motel (1989), The Mysterium (1992), First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1997) and The Dutch Wife (2002).

Biography McCormack was born in Bellshill, Scotland, an impoverished industrial community located 32 kilometres outside Glasgow where his father worked in a steel mill. McCormack took a master's degree in English literature from the University of Glasgow, then taught at a high school in Muirkirk, Scotland, a mining town. In 1966, he went to the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he wrote his PhD on Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

Writing As an academic, McCormack's writings tend to be informed by the types of 17th century works that have been his academic focus, but they also encompass shadowy worlds of criminality, violence (often family violence), natural and human-invented tragedy, and magic realism. He also favours telling the adventures of an individual by describing his or her roots (and that of his forefathers), and then traveling with him through life and its adventures.

Many of McCormack's books were set in Camberloo, Ontario, a fictional name for a town similar to Waterloo and Cambridge, Ontario.

Themes There are several recurring themes in McCormack's books. Besides the recurring theme of "Sad Tales of Patagonia" and its tale of murder and mutilation, McCormack's heroes tend to have an academic/bookish bent, been born in Scotland, and have settled in the same part of Canada that he did. They also travel extensively, often by ship, and meet eccentric fellow travelers who relate to them their life stories and interests. Many of these travelers come to tragic ends themselves.

McCormack's reappearing subjects are: coincidence frequent portrayal of an ascetic life a sense of imminent disaster writing/story telling, metafiction intertextuality

Works Inspecting the Vaults (1987) Inspecting the Vaults contains an introduction and 20 short stories. It was re-published in 1993 by Penguin in an edition that included the novel The Paradise Motel.

The Paradise Motel (1989) The Paradise Motel is about Ezra Stevenson, who hears the tale of family murder and mutilation recounted in "Sad Stories of Patagonia" from his grandfather, Ezra Stevenson. He makes it his life mission to find out what happened to the four survivors of the tragedy, and the book follows his quest in four sections, each named for one of the survivors.

The Mysterium (1993) The Mysterium is a "metafictional detective" or "anti-detective" story in the vein of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

First Blast of the Trumpet Against The Monstrous Regiment of Women (1997) First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women takes its inspiration from The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women by Scottish Reformer John Knox, which was published in 1558. The book concerns the birth, life and travels of an orphan, who encounters a bookish sailor who shows him Knox's book, among others. It also concerns the woman that the protagonist meets in the course of his life before he finally settles in Camberloo, Ontario.

The Dutch Wife (2002) The Dutch Wife concerns a man whose mother married two men who bore the same name. He embarks on a journey across the world to discover the truth behind this unusual situation.

Cloud (2014) McCormack's last novel Cloud was published in August 2014.

Awards 1988 Commonwealth Writers Prize in the Canada Caribbean Region for Inspecting the Vaults 1990 Spring Book Award from the Scottish Arts Council for The Paradise Motel 1990 nominated for the People's Prize for Fiction 1997 nominated for the Governor General's Award for First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women 1999 The Literacy Award at the K-W Arts Awards Ceremony

Published works

Fiction Inspecting the Vaults (1987) (short stories) The Paradise Motel (1989) (fiction) The Mysterium (1993) (fiction) First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1997) The Dutch Wife (2002) Cloud (2014)