Farley Mowat, Great Teller Of True Tales

8 Pages 2052 Words

ung boy from Toronto and a half-native boy from Keewatin. Together, they roam the harsh northern regions of Manitoba, learning as they go. Mowat also uses the mid-western regions of Canada for Owls in the Family (1961), a story which incorporates Mowat’s own pet owls, Wol and Weeps, to illustrate life in the prairies. These books are based in real settings, which Mowat describes with a confident exactness. But the correctness of the descriptions and the evidence they are derived from have often been questioned by critics and scholars. When reading his books, one must remember the subjectivity with which Farley Mowat writes.
Farley Mowat’s books are designed to be entertaining. He writes with a notion that "using entertainment you can then inform, you can propagandize, you can elucidate, you can do anything you want", thus clearly his books are not purely factual (Goddard 48). For this reason, his books are as difficult to classify as he is to understand. His books fill the gap left somewhere between fact and fiction, a problem which has frustrated librarians to an endless extreme. When asked, Farley Mowat explains he writes "subjective non-fiction", a term which has brought him much criticism and forced him into a lifetime of explanation (Goddard 52). Reporters and interviewers have relentlessly interrogated Farley Mowat over the years in hopes of uncovering lies and discrepancies which would discredit Mowat and turn his reading audience away in distrust.
Farley Mowat has never denied the elements of elaboration and exaggeration which exist in his writing. On the contrary, he explains his objectives for writing and denounces any accusations that he invents facts. Mowat is driven by the motto "Never Let the Facts Interfere with the Truth", and admits that if the facts aren’t pleasing, he ignores them (The Farle...