Jeffrey Moore (writer)

Jeffrey Moore

International Festival of Authors
Born Montreal
Occupation Novelist and translator
Language English and French
Nationality Canadian
Alma mater  • University of Toronto
 • University of Ottawa
Notable awards Commonwealth Writers Prize and The Canadian Authors Association Award.
Website
www.jeffreymoore.org

Jeffrey Moore is a Canadian writer, translator and educator currently living in Val-Morin in the Quebec Laurentians. Moore was born in Montreal, and educated at the University of Toronto, BA, the Sorbonne and the University of Ottawa, MA.

Novels

Moore’s first novel, Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain[1] won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in 2000, and has been translated into a dozen different languages. In his review of Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain for the National Post, Frank Moher described Moore as “a new, sophisticated comic author who combines John Irving’s inventive virtuosity with Tom Green’s contempt for everything stuffy and comfy.”[2] The novel chronicles the peregrinations of its love-obsessed picaresque hero, Jeremy Davenant, as he moves from England to Toronto to Montreal’s “Plateau district” in pursuit of a destiny, that he believes is determined by a page ripped from an encyclopedia, which includes a university career based on a bogus PhD with a plagiarized thesis on the apocryphal Shakespeare play, A Yorkshire Tragedy, and the intermittently requited love of his “dark lady,” a Roma named Milena. In his review for the Globe and Mail, Jim Bartley praised the novel’s “keen characterizations,” as well as its “hugely engaging set pieces and a plot that traces a gratifying arc.”[3]

Moore’s second novel, The Memory Artists,[4] (published 2004 by Viking, 19 translations) won the Canadian Authors Association Prize for fiction in 2005. It follows Noel Burun, a psychology graduate student with synaesthesia and hypermnesia, as he sets out with three equally eccentric friends to find a wonder-drug cure for his mother’s early-onset Alzheimer’s. “Moore explores every facet of memory,” according to Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist, “as both a burden and a blessing--in this delightful and inspired story.”[5] In the New York Times Book Review, Michael J. Agovino described The Memory Artists as “a rich novel, erudite and funny, as much about brain chemistry, the wellness industry and poetry as it is about memory.” Agovino concludes that “The Memory Artists is a pleasure to read; it's strangely uplifting to spend time with these flawed but humane characters.” [6]

In Moore’s third novel, The Extinction Club,[7] (published 2010 by Penguin, 12 translations), Nile Nightingale is on the lam from false charges of child abduction pressed against him by his ex-girlfriend in New Jersey. When he attempts to hole up in an abandoned church in the Laurentians, he encounters the beaten and bloodied Céleste, a fourteen-year-old, animal-rights activist who has been squatting there. Recently orphaned of her last living relative, her grandmother, Céleste turns to Nile for her survival and to continue her battle against poachers ready to hunt the rare North American cougar to extinction. “At its best, The Extinction Club is gripping and incisive,” according to the Globe and Mail review by Darryl Whetter, who also credits the novel with integrating “philosophical inquiries into violence and predation with an undeniably dynamic plot.”[8]

Academic Reception

Academic treatment of Moore’s work, thus far, has focussed on its relation to Quebec literature and, more specifically, to Anglo-Quebec literature. For example, in his essay “Is There an Anglo-Québécois Literature?” Gregory J. Reid notes that "Moore's Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain includes French-speaking characters and, therefore, code shifting" and that the novel problematizes "the minority status of English in Quebec [. . .] through exaggeration and comic irony rather than earnest denial."[9] In “A Context for Conversation? Reading Jeffrey Moore’s The Memory Artists as Anglo-Quebec Literature,” Patrick Coleman compares the novel to Robert Majzels' Hellman's Scrapbook and Jacques Godbout's Les Têtes à Papineau and concludes that "Further comparative studies along these lines, in which a particular work is confronted with others from both different languages and literary traditions, would sharpen our understanding of the problematic relationship between theme, style and location in Anglo-Quebec literature."[10] In “Jeffrey Moore’s The Memory Artists: Synaesthesia, Science and the Art of Memory,” Marc André Fortin analyzes the novel in terms of the interplay between science and literature.[11]

Selected Translations of French works

University Teaching

Moore has lectured on translation, literature and creative writing at Concordia University, the Université de Montréal, UQÀM, McGill University, Bishop's University, and led workshops for the Quebec Writers’ Federation.

References

  1. ↑ Moore, Jeffrey. Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain. Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 1999.
  2. ↑ Moher, Frank. “Yo! Canajon Fiction, Mon.” National Post, 25 March 2000: 9.
  3. ↑ Bartley, Jim. "review of Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain. Globe and Mail. 15 April 2000: R2.
  4. ↑ Moore, Jeffrey. The Memory Artists. New York: Saint Martin's Griffin, 2006.
  5. ↑ Wilkinson, Joanne. "review of The Memory Artists." Booklist. 1 February 2006: 30.
  6. ↑ Agovino, Michael J. "review of The Memory Artists." New York Times Book Review. 14 May 2006: 14.
  7. ↑ Moore, Jeffrey. The Extinction Club. New York: Arcade, 2013.
  8. ↑ Whetter, Darryl. "review of The Extinction Club/ Saved from extinction ." Globe and Mail 28 July 2010.
  9. ↑ Reid, Gregory. "Is There an Anglo-Québécois Literature?" Essays on Canadian Writing 84 (2009): 73.
  10. ↑ Coleman, Patrick. “A Context for Conversation? Reading Jeffrey Moore’s The Memory Artists as Anglo-Quebec Literature.” Journal of Canadian Studies. 46.3: 219.
  11. ↑ Fortin, Marc André. “Jeffrey Moore’s "The Memory Artists: Synaesthesia, Science and the Art of Memory.” Studies in Canadian Literature (2012) 37.2: 32-53.

External links