IN 1899, MANY YEARS before the invention of the grant-in-aid-of-publication, Bliss Carman wrote the following words: "If all our busy, well-meaning critical babble could be blotted out for a single decade, the benefit to art would be incredible." It`s not difficult to feel some sympathy for this point of view when confronted with six books on Canadian writers, all but one having been eased into the world with the assistance of what our bilingual bureaucrats choose to call "subventions " The only unsubsidized work, shamelessly billing itself as a "revised edition," is in fact the unrevised text of a Twayne book on Margaret Laurence, with the addition of an 18-page epilogue. The publisher has not exactly gone out on a limb for this one. These are books written by and for academics, in some cases for the two or three other specialists who have a particular interest in the subject. They are works burdened by the need for a thesis - some specific approach to the writer`s work that requires the scholar to mount a divide-and-classify campaign, heavy on thematic criticism. Thus, despite the evident dissimilarities between one work and another, for the shrewd critic they are as peas in a pod; different in size and shape perhaps, but leaving the same taste in the mouth. In Misao Dean`s A Different Point of View: Sara Jeannette Duncan (McGill-Queen`s University Press, 191 pages, $34.95 cloth), the works of her subject present a "critique of the dominant ideologies of imperialism, unrestrained capitalism, bourgeois democracy, and patriarchy, and a program for social reform..." In other words, Duncan is not merely a political novelist, but more important, a politically correct novelist, by contemporary standards. At least, it would be nice for Professor Dean if that were always the case; unfortunately, Duncan`s novels keep falling out of the Procrustean bed. To these deviations from ideological purity, Dean has the answer: "Duncan could not be a whole-hearted nationalist because she was an imperialist, could not be an unqualified feminist because she finally accepted patriarchally imposed definitions of the female." Is this a thesis worth proving? More to the point, is it a thesis that can rescue Duncan`s art from oblivion? The answer, of course, is no and no again. In making the case for Duncan as a political writer, Dean loses sight of Duncan the writer. When Dean talks about "the mission of Duncan`s art," the emphasis falls on the mission and not on the art. Virtually ignored in this book are the elements of fiction that make it entertaining to readers -both today and at the turn of the century when Duncan was writing: characterization, plot, style, setting, narrative technique. To the working out of the thesis, however, art is largely irrelevant, and evaluation in bad taste. A less rigidly schematic book is Dermot McCarthy`s study of Ralph Gustafson, A Poetics of Place (McGill-Queen`s University Press, 323 pages, $39.95 cloth). McCarthy is a great admirer of Gustafson`s craftsmanship, and his detailed analyses of poems such as "To Give Intuition a Certitude` and "The Overwhelming Green" are exemplary. However, he too insists on reading individual works as if they were part of an overall literary policy from which the writer seldom deviated. Of one poem, for instance, he argues that it "can be read as programmatic of Gustafson`s approach," and he frequently refers to specific poems as "statements" or "major rethinkings," as if they were speeches designed to put forward a political platform. The clarity of McCarthy`s own prose is compromised by his reliance on contemporary theorists of postmodernism, who clothe their ignorance in polysyllabic disguises. This book should nevertheless bring Gustafson some long overdue attention from the academic community. He is a fine poet who has lingered in the shadows of better-known contemporaries like A. J. M. Smith and F. R. Scott. He is not, however, quite as fine as McCarthy makes him out to be, but then exaggeration of an author`s merits has been an essential aspect of Can Lit criticism since ... well, since Bliss Carman was nominated for unofficial poet laureate of Canada. And with this exaggerated praise comes the inevitable denigration of anyone who has dared to question the excellence of the critic`s chosen laureate. Thus Gerald Lynch, in his introduction to Bliss Carman: A Reappraisal (University of Ottawa Press, 208 pages, $24.95 paper), a collection of papers from a scholarly symposium, asserts that the poet "has suffered from the misrepresentation and neglect that can be attributed to the slash-and-burn tactics" of Canadian modernists; specifically, he says, Smith and Scott. Actually, Smith and Scott knew little and wrote less about Carman or Canadian literature at the time when they were most susceptible to modernist influences, but for our academic resurrection men, ignorance is not bliss if it`s ignorance of Bliss. Most of the contributors to this volume employ the familiar academic gambit of influence-peddling to justify their high regard for Carman. If he can be shown to have influenced younger poets of distinction, or conversely, if his works contain any allusions to major poets, then he too must be a major poet. Thus the lineage of Carman extends backward to Pound, Stevens, Shelley, and Blake, and forward to Al Purdy, D. G. Jones, and Leonard Cohen. But with the exception of D. M. R. Bentley, whose fascinating study of "Carman and Mind Cure" does not ignore questions of form, none of these critics are willing to examine Carman`s verse as verse. Even Bentley plumbs the depths of banality when he attempts to summarize the poet`s significance by arguing that "Carman`s sense of man`s kinship with the leaf, the butterfly, and the scarlet maple ... may yet prove to be his greatest virtue and his most appealing quality." If this is all that can be said by Carman`s cleverest critic today, then the slashand-burn school need hardly have bothered. Patricia Monk has the field to herself in essaying a biocritical study of James de Mille, the 19th-century Maritime writer best known for his science-fiction novel, A Strange Manuscript Foundin a Copper Cylinder. Monk`s The Gilded Beaver: An Introduction to the Life and Work of James De Mille (ECW, 293 pages, $25 paper) is an old-fashioned literary biography, with a section of "Life" followed by a smaller section of "Works," with little attempt made to relate the two. The author understates the case when she admits that "James De Mille leaves a great deal to be desired as the subject of a biography." In fact, the biographical section could be described in Kingsley Amis`s words as "a funere al parade of yawn-enforcing facts," with considerable attention devoted to such weighty matters as De Mille`s literary borrowings and his college accounts. Given the paucity of facts, Monk is repeatedly reduced to conjecture: "If ... presumably ... it would not rule out ... was probably ... it seems unlikely, although not impossible ... seems to support such an inference..." One turns with relief to the "Works" section only to encounter literary criticism of a rare order indeed: "In rhyming `rehearse it he` and `university`...De Mille is clearly being deliberately playful . " Of the majority of De Mille`s novels, the author says, "there is nothing that differentiates them from other popular fiction of their time." With his inner life unknown, his public life unremarkable, and his works unworthy of analysis, why is De Mille the subject of a nearly 300-page study? Professor Monk has the answer: "De Mille deserves to be remembered because he was worth remembering." Remembering Margaret Laurence seems to be the prime reason for the reissue of Patricia Morley`s Margaret Laurence (McGill-Queen`s University Press, 195 pages, $14,95 paper), now subtitled The Long journey Home. An epilogue, "Her Final Years," has been added, but the text itself has not been revised, so that the first section of Chapter I still ends with the statement that Laurence is "currently at work on a new book." While the epilogue is undoubtedly a moving tribute to Laurence`s courage and compassion, the publisher`s description of the book as a "revised edition!` is a shameful trick, and despite the claim of Timothy Findley prominently featured on the front cover, this is no "literary biography." It is a critical study of Laurence preceded by a nine-page summary of her life. In the midst of some generally sound criticism, Morley makes wildly exaggerated claims for Laurence`s greatness, but this aspect of the book was remarked on at the time of its first publication and needs no further comment. Prague Blues: The Fiction of Josef Skvorecky (ECW, 286 pages, $16 paper), by Sam Solecki, makes no pretence of being a biography. It rightly calls itself a critical study, devoting a chapter to each of Skvorecky`s major works. In common with the other books under review, this one is obsessed with classifying, summarizing, and drawing comparisons (to, among others, Hemingway, Faulkner, Conrad, and Graham Greene), but its approach is less testy and less rhetorical than the others. Solecki is more preoccupied with ideas than with technique, and he evidently feels some discomfort in having to rely on English, and occasionally French, translations. He manages to communicate enthusiasm for his subject, but it is an enthusiasm tempered by a welcome sense of proportion. In an epigraph to the conclusion, Solecki quotes Milos Forman: "Throughout his life a man retells the same story over and over again." This, unfortunately, is one impression of Skvorecky left by this book. The recurring motif of totalitarianism and the continual use by Skvorecky of his alter ego Danny Smiricky, with his compulsive interest in jazz, film, and seduction, suggest the author`s powers of invention are somewhat limited. The "comic vision" that Solecki celebrates is not readily apparent in the quotations he uses. Nevertheless, this book succeeds, where many Can Lit studies fail, in analysing an author`s work without necessarily surrounding it with an aura of sanctity.