Essay On Timothy Findley

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Timothy Irving Frederick Findley was a famous Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and actor. Throughout his illustrious career he won many awards such as a Governor General's Award for English-language drama in 2000. On top of his successful writing career he was considered an inspiration to many people in the LGBTQ community. During his active years of writing (1960s-2000s) he wrote many great pieces including The Wars, Headhunter, Pilgrim, and Elizabeth Rex.
Timothy Findley was born on October 30th, 1930 in Toronto, Ontario. Timothy was one of three sons to Allan Gilmour Findley, a stockbroker, and his wife Margaret Maude Bull. His grandfather was the president of a popular farm-machinery company named Massey-Harris. Also, …show more content…

Together they would go on to work on many different projects together including television miniseries The National Dream which received an audience of three million within Canada which set a record for CBC in terms of dramatic programming. He left acting in 1960 because he was inspired by a famous actress and screenwriter named Ruth Gordon to pursue writing even more. His first two novels (The Last of the Crazy People (1967) and The Butterfly Plague (1969)) had to be published in Britain and the United States after being rejected by Canadian publishers. It was shocking that both were rejected since in the literature community both are considered to be “well-written with varied vocabulary and descriptive style of writing.” Both of his first two novels took place in Southern California. Having his first to books not published in Canada did not faze him at all as he went on to have a successful writing career writing many novels, and winning many awards such as the Trillium Book Award. Although, in 1985 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, and on June 21, 2002, in Brignoles, France, not far from his house in Cotignac, he passed away due to his declining health at the age of 71. One year after his death he was inducted into the Canadian walk of …show more content…

He showed that you should never give up by writing one of his most famous books (The Wars) right after his first two were rejected by Canadian publishers. Also at a time where it wasn’t socially accepted he proudly announced his homosexuality on The Shulman File, even taking the host Morton Shulman by surprise. He also explored mental illness, gender, and sexuality which are kind of gray areas for many authors. Timothy also created an entire new genre by himself which was called Southern Ontario Gothic which is a sub-genre of the Gothic novel genre. This genre usually examines the role of evil in the human soul usually using supernatural or magical

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