Life Is Like Canadian Football and Other Authentic Folk Songs

A grossly inaccurate "memoir" about Canadian folk legends.

Henry Adam Svec has been pushing boundaries in Canadian folklore since he unearthed songs by CFL players in Library and Archives Canada, thereby thrusting himself into the scene—and the media spotlight. Those spartan poems are finally included in this anthology, in addition to the fruits of his subsequent expeditions, but there is much more besides, including honest accounts of the folklorist’s myriad trials and tribulations. This experimental and genre-defying book mixes the adventurous energies of Alan Lomax and Stompin’ Tom, the intertextual conceptualism of Vladimir Nabokov and Mark Z. Danielewski, and the searing intensity of Elizabeth Smart and Chris Kraus.

"Comically entertaining, presented with 'performative verve', as novelist Jacob Wren puts it."—Atlantic Books Today

"This book is cracking me up—and I don't even like football—but it is just so well written."—Robert Dayton, author of The Canadian Romantic