| Norman Levine | |
| Awards: | Matt Cohen Prize |
| Birth Date: | October 22, 1923 |
| Death Date: | June 14, 2005 |
| Education: | McGill University King's College, London |
Albert Norman Levine (October 22, 1923 – June 14, 2005) was a Canadian short story writer, novelist and poet who spent most of his adult life in England. He is perhaps best remembered for his terse prose. Though he was part of the St. Ives artistic community in Cornwall, and friends with painters Patrick Heron and Francis Bacon, his written expression was not abstract, but concrete. "The leaner the language the more suggestive," he wrote in his 1993 essay, Sometimes It Works.[1]
Levine's reputation stood high in the United Kingdom and in Europe, although his reputation has been overshadowed in Canada because of his unflattering portrayals of the underside of Canadian life.[2] Heinrich Böll was a champion of Levine's work.
Norman Levine was born on October 22, 1923. His birthplace is alternatively described as Ottawa, Canada or Poland. His Jewish family had fled from Poland to Canada with the advent of anti-Semitism in the years prior to World War II. His adolescence was spent on the streets of Ottawa, but his coming of age was his time as a Lancaster bomber as bomb aimer and second pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force in 429 (Bomber) Squadron RCAF. He was based at Leeming.
After the war, he enrolled at McGill University, graduating with a BA and a MA. He then moved to England, ostensibly to pursue a PhD at King's College, London, which was never completed.
In England, he met an Englishwoman, Margaret, settled down and had three children. His writing, a reflection of his life, was also a direct influence on that life, as he had little money to keep up rent payments; as a result his family often moved.
In 1958, he published Canada Made Me, a travelogue across Canada. The book negative portrayal of Canada provoked controversy there, and McClelland & Stewart refused to publish a Canadian edition, as had been originally planned. A Canadian edition did not appear until 1979.
After England he lived, for a time, in Canada, with his second wife. He also lived in France before finally returning to England, where he died ten years later.
Later in life, there was a thaw in Levine's relations with the Canadian literature establishment. In 2002 he was presented with the Matt Cohen Prize, established in 2001 by the Writers' Trust of Canada to recognize a lifetime of work by a Canadian writer.