Although Frank Davey's "Surviving the Paraphrase" has been canonized and appropriated by Canadian theorists as a crucial resistance narrative, critics have not focussed on the essay as a literary document that is related to the author's career, his consciousness, or his life. The fiction of Davey's life encodes his own stance as the author of the text. "Surviving the Paraphrase" can be read as a confession and redemption narrative; it traces Davey's personal sense of loss in moving east as a loss of self and voice, and his desire to redeem himself (reclaim his voice) by positing a non-centralist vision of recovery through form (which Davey equates with the authenticity of "writing as writing"). By the end of the essay, thematic criticism has been identified with power structures that need to be destroyed in order to create a milieu in which no writer is excluded. The essay's appeal lies both in the contradictions between loyalty and liberation it embodies and in the way these contradictions are presented as relevant issues to a professional community faced with questions about its own identity and future.
