Saturday night lives!: Selected diaries - Couverture rigide

For seven years (1987-94) John Fraser was editor of the venerable and lively magazine Saturday Night. Working for its controversial owner, Conrad Black (who turned out not to be the bully of popular imagination, as you’ll read in the introduction to the book), Fraser had one tough job – actually six. He had to put out monthly issues, on time; to rescue the magazine from the circulation and economic doldrums it had fallen into; to cajole Canada’s top writers into contributing; to discover and nurture up-and-coming writers; to keep skittish advertisers happy; and to write something smart and fresh for each issue – his Diary.

Thank goodness for the Diary. For while Fraser proved to be a marvellous editor who accomplished all of the above, had the first five been his only tasks, Canada would have lost one of its best writers under piles of manuscripts, phone messages, business plans, and ever-improving circulation figures.

The Diary allowed Fraser to write about whatever was on his mind. Happily, but not surprisingly, his concerns reflected the concerns of most adult Canadians at the end of the century. Now the best and most enduring of his Diaries have been gathered as Saturday Night Lives!

Here, Fraser gives us everything from astute and original takes on Canada’s political and cultural life to savage satires on the depopulation of Atlantic Canada; from comic take-offs of Revenue Canada’s income-tax guides to denunciations of the horrific suppression of China’s democracy movement. (This last Diary won a National Magazine award and fuelled a bitter fight in the House of Commons over trade with China.) Fraser’s wry and whimsical side is also shown in Saturday Night Lives! as he wonders what ever happened to the cherubim and seraphim who once populated the heavens or writes in bewilderment about why he’s stopped raging at Brian Mulroney.

Those who have never before read Fraser’s Diary are in for a treat, and faithful readers of Saturday Night will welcome having the best of the Diaries between two covers.

“Fraser’s seven-year tenure as Saturday Night editor...pushed him to the front ranks of national commentators. It’s an ether he deserves to inhabit on the sheer grounds of unpredicctability, wit and working the wide margin.”
–Edmonton Journal

“A good week’s worth of good reading, sturdy value in the market of Canadian letters.”
–Vancouver Sun

“There is every reason to cheer when a good and readable writer takes up the cause of the things he loves. In Fraser’s case, these things include his family; dancing and dancers; Sunday school; human rights at any level; good teachers; and almost above all, the pleasures of friendship.”
–Montreal Gazette

“Phrases turned as if by a master woodworker with a slow lathe and fine, sharp chisels.”
–Vancouver Sun

“Fraser has fun when he’s going overboard. You’d hardly expect less from someone who is both an unrepentant smoker and a Sunday school teacher, a China hand and a former dance critic.”
–Quill & Quire