Deep Too by Stan Dragland

Employing a sort of leaping or mosaic structure and incorporating emails re: penis-enlargement, questionable limericks, jokes, graffiti, and a photo of a “penis latte,” along with personal anecdotes and probes of books and films, Deep Too is a book of non-fiction stories. It is a funny and sometimes biting book about the phenomenon of male strut and competition. Thinking with feeling, the author posits an expansive masculinity that rises above stereotype, traditional roles and the either/or choices they so often involve.

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Praise for Stan Dragland:

“In Deep Too, Stan Dragland takes a long, hard look at the penis joke. To the work of illuminating pain, he puts his enormous heart and brilliant mind, his ever-ready wit, and a lambent prose that truly glows from within.” — Marina Endicott, author of The Little Shadows

on Journeys Through Bookland and Other Passages:
“Those familiar with Stan Dragland’s work recognize an author who works in protean literary forms … In this new book Stan Dragland reveals a different side of growing up. Journeys Through Bookland is about how we educate ourselves, and the influences that guide us—fairy tales, individual teachers, family life, dreams and nightmares. Stan Dragland is at his most moving in this book. He makes fiction out of all these sources, so that by the end an individual and a true voice emerge.” — Michael Ondaatje

on Stormy Weather: Foursomes:
“This book is like a fine, old song that overflows with tenderness and hard-won wisdom. A true and perfect companion for every weather.” — Elizabeth Hay

on The Drowned Lands:
“Dragland has Cormac McCarthy’s gentle humour and affinity for magnificent landscapes, and, like Virginia Woolf, an ability to pierce the most intimate thoughts of his characters. Here is emotion as fast-flickering and dazzling as sunlight on water. The Drowned Lands is a deeply affecting story, beautifully told.” — Lisa Moore

Reviews of Deep Too: 

“[Stan Dragland] accomplishes something in Deep Too that combines, in my view, the best aspects of literary criticism and the development of self and cultural awareness … I enjoyed being presented with difficult, even perverse subject matter and coming out feeling fuller and more human at the end of it.” — Alexandra Gilbert, Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review  

“Dragland has long been one of my favourite non-fiction writers, exploring literature in such a way that one can’t help but be immediately drawn into his ever-expanding conversation, sharp observations, and lyric connections. Through bringing in such a range of references and stories, he manages to make incredible connections and observations that would have been impossible any other way.” — rob mclennan 

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Stan Dragland is originally from Alberta and now lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He was educated at The University of Alberta and Queen’s University and is Professor Emeritus, Department of English, the University of Western Ontario. He was founder of Brick Magazine and Brick Books, and is still active with the latter. Among his books are Wilson MacDonald’s Western Tour (critical collage), Peckertracks (novel), Journeys Through Bookland and Other Passages (fiction and non-fiction), The Bees of the Invisible: Essays in English Canadian Writing, Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (criticism), Apocrypha: Further Journeys (non-fiction), Stormy Weather: Foursomes (prose poems) and The Drowned Lands (novel).