ROBERT WEAVER
What makes a great editor? If we seek an answer to that question, we could do worse than look at the life and work of Robert Weaver. He, more than any other individual, can be credited with building and nourishing, at CBC radio, a tradition of literary excellence that was of lasting benefit to Canadian authors. He not only put badly needed money in their pockets by commissioning broadcast scripts from them, but he also created, in the publishing world, an enlightened respect for serious writing that bad previously been rather tepid.
It is easy to signal Weaver’s importance by a bit of name-dropping. Four of the authors in his stable, so to sneak, achieved well-merited fame all over the English-speaking world: Margaret Atwood, Morley Callaghan, Alice Munro, and Mordecai Richler; and all of them were constant in their gratitude to him, both as a patron and, significantly, as editor.
However, there was far more to Weaver’s galaxy than just the presence of a few stars. There was also an abundance of minor luminaries, some of them quite talented, all of them worth, in some measure, his attention and help.
In that respect, he always knew that literature, like his beloved baseball, could only count on a crop of major-league players, if there was a solid base of minor-league players to draw on — plus, of course, a large body of fans willing to buy tickets. Knowing that, Weaver cast his net wide. Short stories, poems, literary features, docudramas, all were grist to his mill. And his door was always open: writers knew they could come to him with proposals, any time, whether they were established professionals or virtual unknowns.
Over the years, Weaver had three main venues for presenting the spoken word. He founded a weekly hour-long program called “Anthology”, as a vehicle for poetry, short fiction, and criticism; it was exclusively devoted to new writing, mostly by or about Canadians, and it had one of the longest runs in CBC history. Almost equally long-running was his weekly series of fifteen-minute programs called “Canadian Short Stories”: it featured mini-fiction by writers from all over Canada, mostly beginners, read by distinguished actors in Toronto; and when it eventually went off the air, Weaver replaced it with an annual competition for Canadian writers of not so short stories. His third venue for writers was “CBC Wednesday Night”, the flagship program series, two hours in length, which presented the very best national and international literature, drama, and music, year round; he was chairman of the Wednesday Night committee, and while he modestly deferred to the judgments of members who were expert in music or drama, he gave unrivalled leadership in the literary field. In sum, Weaver, in all three of his CBC roles, was a singular and powerful force for good in Canadian literature, as both editor and patron.
His career spanned a time (the second half of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first) when English-speaking Canada began finally to assert itself as a lead actor on the world’s cultural stage. He was a great contributor to that development. But it should not be thought that his reflexes were narrowly nationalistic. He was very responsive to the best work being done in other countries. Under his aegis, eminent foreign writers of our time found their way onto the CBC airwaves. Among them, for example, were James Agee (USA), Albert Camus (France), Friedrich Dürenmatt (Switzerland), Georg Faludy (Hungary), Václav Havel (Czechoslovakia), Primo Levi (Italy), Nadezhda Mandelstam (Russia), Harold Pinter (England), Nel1y Sachs (Germany), and Georges Simenon (Belgium). The list reads like a roll-call of modern masters.
Weaver himself had no illusions about belonging in that major league of creative genius, or even in the minor league of creative talent. He had no creative gift of his own, and never supposed that he had. What he had, in abundance, was a superb editorial vocation; he put himself and his job at the respectful service of accomplished writers; he had an unerring eye and ear for gifted new writers, and not only did he support and encourage them generously, but also he helped them develop their skills with tactful, constructive criticism. His relations with them, new or established, were a unanimous mutual admiration society. He was a very kind and decent man.
If epitaph were needed, it should surely read, “Robert Weaver, friend of writers”.
FOOTNOTE
The following poem, if something can be called a poem that is couched in such conversational language, was written during Weaver’s lifetime: hence the impression given in it that he is still among us. Its title, “Parallax”, is used metaphorically: as a technical term in astronomy, it denotes “the mutual inclination of two lines meeting in an angle” (OED); in this context, it refers to the mutuality of writer and editor, sometimes producing astronomical results.
