Antanas Sileika looks back fondly at this book about the cultural history of nostalgia

This episode originally aired on March 20, 2021.

Antanas Sileika regularly appears as a columnist on The Next Chapter. He's an author, the former director of the Humber School for Writers and he's been nominated for literary awards such as the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and the City of Toronto Book Award.

Sileika recently read On Nostalgia, a collection of essays by Edmonton-based author David Berry. The book is an in-depth examination of the desire or yearning to revisit the past and our desire to hold on to something that is just beyond our reach.

The power of looking back

"I've always been defensive of my historical fiction — and also a little bit shy about talking about things in the past — until I read David Berry, who helped provide me with a defence for myself.

Berry insists that nostalgia is something that is, in fact, new for our times.

"Berry insists that nostalgia is something that is, in fact, new for our times. The term nostalgia only became popular in the 1960s, so it's part of the current condition.

"In the 60s, as marketing becomes stronger and stronger, nostalgia is hitched up along with marketing, and it's driving us in a certain way to want things and more things."

The malleability of nostalgia

"Nostalgia, Berry says, can be used and harnessed to politics — not only to capitalism, but to politics as well, usually in a very bad way. He says when politicians use nostalgia, they tend to make a general statement. Then what happens is the individuals with whom this adheres, they create their own mental picture.

"He says that one of the problems with nostalgia is its malleability, its ability to be used not only for good purposes, but in politics, for bad ones, too. 

"Berry says that we as human beings are endlessly creating ourselves. In other words, the belief that a person is not a stable, unchanging character, but that we develop over time. We are always looking back to the past — and we then recreate who we are at the moment in our vision, our thoughts of the past. 

Berry says that we as human beings are endlessly creating ourselves.

"Even if those thoughts are not true, because we know memory is faulty, they help to create who we are now, right at this moment."

Antanas Sileika's comments have been edited for length and clarity.