Discussing failure openly with others is not a common thing for many people to do, let alone in public. Now imagine having failed in front of an audience of close to 35 million Canadians and then proceeding to chronicle this very open humiliation. This past Wednesday, as he has in previous events promoting his latest book, this is what Michael Ignatieff did in his presentation to a large and captive audience at the Ottawa International Writers Festival.
Political memoirs, as host Craig Oliver so eloquently put, are normally mind-numbingly dull and excessively self-congratulatory. In contrast, he finds Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics to be a personal and strikingly candid account of Ignatieff's time in politics. Oliver aptly added that this memoir has "personal relevancy," and "flesh and blood." This is not a book venting complaint, Ignatieff said, but strongly insists it describes what politics and loss is like when it was happening.
Ignatieff stresses these memoirs are targeted towards young Canadians, interested in politics, who can learn from his mistakes. He explained that at every speech he made during his career as Leader, he spoke to the one person in the room that he hoped to inspire to run for any Party and make Canada a better place as he tried to do. This book is for "the young man or woman thinking, I can do that… he didn't get there but I will."
With this goal in mind, Ignatieff proceeded with a purposeful and decisive talk highlighting some important thoughts and take-aways from his book. You could immediately tell he is an experienced public speaker and enjoys engaging directly with his audience in a frank and open manner. Oliver did an excellent job in keeping Ignatieff on his toes and they both exchanged clever and witty (and often biting) banter in their talk.
Ignatieff's presentation gave a strikingly candid and direct perspective of what his book has to offer in the way of demonstrating not only what politics was like for him, but what it can and should be. First, his book urges us to think about what is currently happening to our politics. Referencing a class he taught on attack ads, Ignatieff explained Canadian politics has turned opponents, or adversaries as he calls them in the book, into enemies. No compromise or understanding can occur and results in personal attacks which are hurtful and often inaccurate, Ignatieff noting that he never was "just visiting" but has always only been a Canadian citizen. Continuing in this dark vein, Ignatieff found the true battle of political life is not to write and present smart policies, but to fight for the right to speak and to be heard. He also quite strongly came out against the digital age, which he says has fragmented our attention span and led to malicious and aggressive personal attacks. Second, he hoped to explain what it is like to fail. I admired his reflection on failure teaching us the most in life. He urged others to not be afraid of failure or success, but to be fearless. Last, he aspires to show what politics can be. It's not just "show business for ugly people" but a calling and vocation to serve the Canadian public. He admires Canada's global population as well as our polite approach to life.
On the other hand, it was also quite disconcerting to hear Ignatieff explain his failure in that, when returning to Canada to run for the Liberal Party, he "didn't understand the Canada [he] was coming back to." I question if it can be as simple as a lack of understanding or the reasoning that he was under the "illusion that Canada was as it was under [Pierre] Trudeau" as it quite evidently has not been this way for a long time.
This young and politically engaged Canadian looks forward to reading the book, and greatly enjoyed the insightful and personal talk given by Ignatieff on his success and failure in politics. Having read many of his other works (I'd like to highlight True Patriot Love; Blood and Belonging; Scar Tissue; and Lesser Evil), I look forward to reading his latest, and gaining more insight into his reflections and hopes for Canadian politics. One can be glad and hopeful that, at least as an author, Michael Ignatieff is far from done.
Toronto’s sitting poet laureate, George Elliott Clarke, will release his first book of verse for children in October: Lasso the Wind: Aurélia’s Verses and Other Poems , which contains collage illustrations by Halifax artist Susan Tooke.
They will be inspiring kids in area schools this Fall as part of the Writers Festival's free Step Into Stories Children's Literacy program.
When did you first decide to become a writer, and what made you choose
writing over all your other options?
I wanted to be a rock-n-roll star. But I couldn't sing, couldn't read music, and didn't know any instruments (except trombone, which I found boring). I decided, at age 15, to write "songs"—rhyming poems of all types, some with tunes in mind, but most tuneless. At 16, I started to write poems—essentially, "free verse."
What is your earliest memory of literature (reading or writing or hearing it)?
My parents read to my brothers and I—a story before going to bed/falling asleep. We must have been age 4,3,2. I don't remember those stories, but I do remember the little picture books that we received of Mother Goose and Grimms' Fairy Tales, and the Classics Illustrated comic book versions of Wells's The Invisible Man and many, many others. In those days, reading was second only to the pleasure of dreaming.
How does teaching fit into your idea of what it means to be a poet?
Teaching gives me access to what newer generations think is important; I hope we all teach (or learn from) each other. It is also a pleasure to get to explore deeply a text or writer that one likes—and to share the enthusiasm.
What are the top three tips would you want to give a young writer or poet?
a) Write all the time;
b) Read everything;
c) Challenge yourself—and trust your instincts.
How do you think you’ve changed as a writer over the course of your career?
I've become more and more willing to write what I want to write and to say what I want to say. Those who don't like it, may very well lump it.
Can you describe an experience that you believe contributed to you becoming a poet?
After I published my first book (in 1983—30 years ago!), I took a creative writing course at Banff, Alberta, and began to write about my own life, including my feelings of trauma over my parents's divorce. When I came back from Banff, I read one of the poems to my mother, who sighed, "Oh, George, how could you have written that?" When I saw that my poem, about a family incident, had been controversial for my mom, I realized that poetry is a powerful art, and it is ever more powerful the closer that one can get to revealing the "truth" about humanity....
What do you think the the future of literature will look like?
Screens, keyboards; tiny screens and pinhead-tiny keyboards. But some of us will still want the smell of ink, the feel of paper, the heft and majesty of an old-fashioned book. (Indeed, governments can spy on what you take off the Internet; but a book—especially used—is still potentially, secretly subversive.)
How can young readers discover more about you and you work?
There are websites—and blogs—and reviews—all on-line. But I prefer that they—I beg them to—look up a volume, buy it (!), and read.
Photo credit: Daniel Bezalel Richardsen
The opening of the pre-festival literary revelry featured the marquee event with a featured author who needs little introduction, even among the Tim Horton's crowd (well, sort of). Margaret Atwood is, with all due respect to Alice Munro, the grand dame of Canadian literature; and the list of awards with which she has been honoured throughout her long career as a novelist, poet, and essayist is lengthy. It was no surprise then that as I arrived to the event, I was just one among hundreds of others, all abuzz with excitement, who turned up to watch her be interviewed by CBC’s Alan Neal (host of the Radio 1 program “All In A Day”).
From the syllable, Atwood demonstrated her confidence and ease with her audience, and began things on an endearingly intimate note by pointing out that the venue, a church, merited a hymn. And so, unselfconsciously and in a somewhat shaky, childlike voice, she sang a hymn that, in her newest book MaddAddam, was sung by the 'God’s Gardeners' characters. Adding in her own sound effects as she went, she encouraged the enthusiastic audience to join her for the last note.
Never having previously experienced any of her public speaking or interviews before, this little performance struck me as incongruent with her reputation as an outspoken feminist, environmentalist, and award-laden writer. However, it meshed well with her recent comment in a New York magazine interview that at her age (73), “you’re neither an honorary man or a dishonorary woman; you’re an elder.” If such is the case, then she appeared to be relishing in the social freedom granted by her new role. She repeatedly joked about her age by introducing her anecdotes with the phrase “Once upon a time…”, and referring to people under the age of 60 as “kids.”
She selected a couple of short excerpts to read from MaddAddam , the final book in the dystopic “Oryx and Crake” trilogy, and instantly captivated the audience through the voices of her created characters and the storytelling mastery for which she is celebrated. Within minutes of beginning her interview with Neal, her ease and disarming charm provided a striking contrast with his apparent nervousness. He jumped from topic to topic and posed questions that did not leave much room for Atwood to speak about some of the larger issues that are brought up in the book or what she hopes her audience will take from it.
However, here and there, she still managed to discuss those things that are quite clearly, closest to her heart. She spoke with some degree of passion about her commitment to changing the way that we use and live in the natural environment, and bookended the evening with her thoughts and comments about the environmental damage that society is currently causing.
It is in fact, this preoccupation and passion of Atwood’s that is one of the driving forces in the plot of this trilogy, which is set in a future just beyond the world as we know it, in the age after a human-caused ecological catastrophe meets the near-elimination of the human race through a virus created in a laboratory. The themes in this trilogy are quite distinct from her first (and only other) foray into the realm of science fiction (and science fiction it is, despite her prim insistence that the trilogy not be classified as such) was with her 1985 book The Handmaid’s Tale , in which she describes a world where women are valued for their capacities as wives and as childbearers, but nothing more.
While The Handmaid’s Tale also describes a dystopic world, the reasons that Atwood chooses to use for the eventual and total breakdown of society as we know it are very different from those that she chooses in MaddAddam. Although still using her fiction as a mouthpiece for causes about which she is passionate, Atwood switches gears slightly from a strong focus on feminist issues to things like corruption within the corporate structure, environmentalism and increasing moral ambiguity in scientific research.
I must admit that I have yet to read the book MaddAddam. However, if it is anywhere near as delightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking as its author revealed herself to be during her interview, then I look forward to the experience immensely.
We launched our 2013 Fall Season Tuesday September 24 with Margaret Atwood and MaddAddam in Ottawa!
The world-acclaimed author, winner of the Governor General’s Award, Man Booker Prize and Giller prize, Margaret Atwood joined Artistic Director Sean Wilson for a funny and insightful conversation for a fully-booked Restaurant E18teen in the Byward Market.
Everyone enjoyed a delicious lunch menu inspired by the MaddAddam Trilogy and received their own copy of Atwood's latest book. Proceeds went to the Ottawa International Writers Festival School Literacy Programs. More photos & audience reactions to our day with Margaret Atwood can be found through @writersfest on Twitter http://twitter.com/Writersfest
Thank you to all who were able to attend this sold-out event and support our literacy programs.
Special thanks to Ottawa Writers Festival Board Member Hattie Klotz for her part in making this event with Margaret Atwood such a success!
Ottawa Writers Festival Board Member Hattie Klotz gets bunny ears from Margaret Atwood, and Artistic Director Sean Wilson isn't safe either.
Margaret Atwood and Sean Wilson sharing talk of MaddAddam & a few futuristic dystopian laughs with 100 guests before lunch is served.
Also there to show their support for children's literacy in Ottawa are
Elizabeth Gibbons & Diane Sullivan from TELUS
Overseeing the book signing table after dessert was Neil Wilson,
Director of Development and Founding Director of the Ottawa International Writers Festival
Photo credit: Daniel Bezalel Richardsen
Having been rebuffed from his original trip from just outside of Boston to the fall 2012 edition of the Writers Fest by nothing short of Hurricane Sandy (cue Sean Wilson’s suggested “the tweet that wrote itself”: #whenbadweatherhappenstogoodrabbis), Ottawa was treated to Rabbi Kushner this spring. The author of numerous titles, but perhaps consigned to eternal recognition of his thoughtful treatise on suffering, ‘ When Bad Things Happen To Good People .’
After his introduction by CBC’s Laurence Wall, the good rabbi intoned that he didn’t suspect that the problem of suffering would have solved itself. A resident of a suburb in Boston for several decades, the audience still had very fresh shock from the Boston Marathon bombings by the Tsaernev brothers. And Rabbi Kushner had a grandson who was barely a mile away from the bomb site at the time of detonation. Horrible as it is, the Rabbi Kushner’s original witticism rings true; no matter when or where, we would hardly have to search far or in vain for a maddening, inexplicable atrocity. Having lost a young son to the disease of progeria (a rare disease that causes rapid aging), Rabbi Kushner confessed that suffering is a something that “continues to oppress me.”
This is what has led Rabbi Kushner to write a biography of the Book of Job for the excellent Jewish Encounters series of Schocken. A book elsewhere reviewed in fine form for the Writers Festival.
The book of Job in the Hebrew Bible is one of the oldest books in the scriptural canon, and indeed of literature, and according to Rabbi Kushner is “the only serious theological book on the nature of God [in Jewish scripture].” While this may perhaps be an overreach (the minor prophets of Hosea, Jonah, and Habakkuk all deal with the nature of God in a bold, heterodox way), there is great deal of truth in the special resonance of Job. He approaches the book in the manner of Rabbi Heschel, who wrote that “the Bible is not Man’s theology but God’s anthropology, less about who God is and more about who human beings ought to be.”
A great translator of the Hebrew scripture, Robert Alter, writes that
The Book of Job is in several ways the most mysterious book of the Hebrew Bible. Formally, as a sustained debate in poetry, it resembles no other text in the canon…Its astounding poetry eclipses all other…
Rabbi Kushner likened it to a hybrid of a serious work of philosophy and a Shakespearean tragedy. To get a sense of the unsettling verse, here is a small sample from Chapter 3 in Alter’s ringing translation:
3 Annul the day that I was born
and the night that said, “A man is conceived.”
4 That day let it be darkness.
Let God above not seek it out,
nor brightness shine upon it.
9 Let its twilight stars go dark.
Let it hope for day in vain,
And let it not see the eyelids of dawn.
Those are the forlorn words of Job, an innocent man whose is afflicted with suffering from a wager that God makes with Satan to test whether Job’s righteousness can remain steadfast when he suffers unbearable lost and torment.
Rabbi Kushner makes a fairly astonishing judgement on the Book of Job as a Conservative rabbi – he asks readers to completely discount the first two and the final chapters in Job. While scholars dispute the unity of the book, the difference in tone is evident even to the observant lay reader. The core of the book, Rabbi Kushner terms as “Poem” with the aforementioned jettisoned portions are called “Fable.”
Two forces present in the world are identified. One is Behemoth, and the other Leviathan.
Behemoth is said to be the “id” that consists of lust and desire, chiefly responsible for the misery in the world. Yet this is also seen as necessary. A selfless world would be a world without loyalty or interests or a choice to do good. Rabbit Kushner illustrates this idea succinctly with a Talmudic tale.
One day in a certain village, they captured the yetzer ha-ra (selfishness) and imprisoned it. They said, From now on, our world will be Paradise. No one will ever do anything wrong. The next day, we are told, no one opened his store for business, no one bought or sold anything, no marriages were arranged, and no babies were conceived. All those activities, it turns out, contain an element of selfishness, without which the world could not function. (pg. 75)
Leviathan on the other hand, is the “spirit of chaos” that acts in sync with the natural world. For according to Rabbi Kushner, “God is moral, Nature is not.” For all the dismissal of theology as mere “intellectual Sudoku,” there is still a yearning for God that is at the root of Rabbi Kushner’s message.
After Job hears God address/respond to him, he says
By the ear’s rumor I heard of You,
and now my eye has seen You.
Therefore do I recant,
And I repent in dust and ashes.
The reason why this is the key portion of this whole book is that it affirms the fact that in spite of all that ails us with and during our mortal coils, the presence of God alone suffices. Rabbi Kushner essentially paraphrases this passage to mean “Now mine eyes have seen You, and I withdraw my complaints. Vulnerable mortal that I am, I am comforted.”
Mark Noll, in reviewing Luhrmann’s ‘When God Talks Back’ in The New Republic , made the following observation:
And how can believers keep on believing when they pray to a supposedly generous God for children to be healed and yet they die, for marriages to survive and yet they fall apart, for careers to take shape and they never do? It is because for those who have come to practice the presence of God, it is not what the presence offers, but the presence itself, that has become most important.
There remained many questions – and how could there not be? – on the place of miracles, the interpretation of scriptural texts, and the reality that this is fundamentally a mystery. Rabbi Kushner mentions C.S. Lewis as a person who went through a transformation from his The Problem of Pain , a largely apologetic work, to A Grief Observed , when he is faced with the profound loss of a belated love barely held for a few happy years. That we will experience pain and be indelibly marked by it is certain. Rabbi Kushner reaffirms that there is a benevolent, transcendent God, who offers us Himself. Often no more, and just as often, no less.
Crime night at this year’s writers festival did not follow the standard crime night format, but then again, no good crime novel is predictable so why should the event be? Usually the authors begin by reading from their most recent novel, then join in the question and answer session for a discussion. This year’s readings did not go quite according to that plan.
Gail Bowen started the evening off with a bang by reading, not from her most recent release, but from her upcoming August novel titled The Gifted. This being the debut of her new material, Bowen was not as polished as one might expect from such a veteran novelist, but the prose was simple, yet somehow illuminating, giving the listener the sense of being present for the events about to unfold. The book will certainly be worth a read when it is released.
Second up was author Inger Ash Wolfe, who in the second twist of the night, turns out to be Michael Redhill. Despite the twist in author's identity, this reading was the most straight-forward as far as content. The story had a great sense of humour and the listener was left with a sense of who the heroine was and a desire to see her situation through to the finish. When asked why he would write under a pseudonym yet reveal his identity, Michael described Inger as a character he “becomes” and through whom he writes his novels. He revealed his identity in order to champion his books and be able to bring them to a wider audience (by doing things such as appearing at a festival such as this).
Perhaps the most fascinating story told this particular evening was Peggy Blair, who did not read from a novel at all. Blair chose not to read from her novel because set in Cuba, she could not possibly get the voices down right to leave the reader the right impression. Instead she regaled the audience with her tale of how she managed to finally get published after meeting Ian Rankin in a bar by chance, bringing the audience along through all the ups and downs of the writing process, the scores of rejections after rejections before lucking out. It turns out that Ian Rankin allowed her to drop his name to his agent, a kind gesture for a complete stranger, and a move which ended up changing her life.
After this rather unusual introduction to the authors and their books, the question and answer session did proceed as usual. The questions asked were thoughtful and the responses provided by the authors were enlightening. Topics covered included social justice issues as all three authors incorporate this to some extent as well as the reasoning behind why all three authors remain true to their Canadian roots. Perhaps most profound of the evening were some of the questions raised by the authors. I will leave you to ponder their answers as the unsolved mystery of this year’s annual crime night.
Michael Redhill asked, “What happens when a place that needs to be small doesn’t remain small?” Gail Bowen asked, “What would push somebody over the edge (and into crime)?” If you can answer those two questions, you might just have yourself a novel.
The street food freeze is over. After an interregnum of nearly two decades, the food truck permit freeze in Ottawa was lifted last fall; the fruition of which manifested in the exciting new rollout of new food trucks this past week. James Cunningham, funnyman and erstwhile performer at Yuk Yuk's in its former location at Albert St., was on hand to both mark Ottawa's street food inauguration and to promote his new book Eat St .
Regaling the audience with the restless delivery of a globetrotter finally come home, Cunningham spoke of the creation of his popular TV show and of his love for the magic of food in its most primal transaction: through food trucks and carts. It was serendipitous circumstances that allowed a comedian to end up hosting a food show. Cunningham's experience of how his pilot episode of an inchoate script actually became the first episode of the first season of a show in its fourth season, is a testament to the importance of timing.
What lent credence to his presence was Ottawa's own exciting influx of food trucks. As Cunningham noted, the recession of 2008 saw a great number of talented chefs and cooks lose their positions in established restaurants. These kitchen artists, in turn, saw a great opportunity in the mobility and independence of operating a food truck or cart. Pop, ice cream, burgers and hot dogs have been mainstays from time immemorial (or so it seems), and yet despite the affection that these familiar outlets engendered in us, there remained a distinct feeling of "is this all there is?" Ottawa, with a population of over a million when including our sister city of Gatineau, is only home to about 45 trucks. The 14 new food trucks and carts were vetted and selected from over 60 applicants with mind to "the proposed menu, business plan, level of vendor experience and the overall contribution to Ottawa’s street food scene."
While the spearheading of this effort took applause-worthy political will from the likes of Mayor Jim Watson and Councillor Mark Taylor (who was on hand at the event to give opening remarks) it is precisely the combination of sceptical nannyishness that has kept Canada so far behind when it comes to abundant and creative street food. As Adam Davidson bemoans in the current New York Times Magazine, this ill grips even the Big Apple. Marie-Claude Lotrie of La Presse has a charming expression to describe street food, as "urban acupuncture, injecting vitality into city life." In a country bequeathed with harsh winter climes, getting into the street food business is a labour of love in a country like Canada, where said business, like motorcycle riding, is seasonal. (Also a reason why Vancouver's street food scene is currently the vanguard of the nation). But weather alone cannot account for the astonishing range of street food in places like Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas. Overregulation of these ventures can act as disincentives rendering it prohibitive to start. Montreal, a city rightly known for its cuisine, seems to tread softly on the dreams of street food: the pre-determined outcome having already been fore-judged; somewhat harshly in VICE and more affably in the Financial Post.
Yet, who am I to despise small beginnings? If Ottawa avoids the worse-off aspects of the forays of other Canadian cities, and moves forward, albeit slowly, in the direction of greater street food, we have a great potential to showing the country how its done. We have a wonderful chronicler, Shawna Wagman, in her City Bites column in Ottawa Magazine and we even have a fledgling Ottawa street food Twitter feed to keep us in the know. There is a definite sense of excitement that was felt at the event for an Ottawa summer filled with innovative and health street food, and I for one cannot wait to sample them all.
Our worlds are increasingly filtered, shaped, and experienced by means of digital technology. Terms like online, email, text, tweet, surf, download, upload, blog, and digitial have become familiar and have frequently been redefined in an Internet era. Douglas Rushkoff had much to say about that on Tuesday night to a packed house at Knox Presbyterian Church.
He began by speaking at length about his idea that digital technology, co-opted by capitalism, has collapsed time to the extent that there is increasingly only a constant present for people; “present shock” describes the human reaction to this world of instantaneous feedback and increasing abstraction. This present shock is characterized by narrative collapse, the undermining of guiding human stories by life focused intensively on the present; digiphrenia, a fragmenting of self fostered by the maintenance of multiple digital identities; overwinding, the result of making time a generic, absolute quantity; fractalonia, the mistaking of self-similarity for real congruence; and apocalypto, the belief that human history has a definite endpoint. The host (Ottawa Citizen Managing Editor Andrew Potter) then asked a number of questions touching on politics, the role of institutions, and the locavore movement before taking questions from the audience.
Rushkoff argued at multiple points that contemporary culture was faced with a choice: there was an opportunity to “restore human-centric agency to culture,” but that there was also the risk of giving in to the pulse and rhythm of present shock. To avoid the latter would involve a much more distributed approach to governance and institutions (à la the Occupy movement) as well as a focus on sharing, developing networks, and filling needs locally.
There were points where I wanted to know more about Rushkoff’s thesis and standpoint. Some thoughts seemed to hang together uneasily (e.g., apocalyto side by side with narrative collapse), and his use of networking as a metaphor for community suggested (at least to me) a strong underlying individualism. And there was a certain irony in hearing him argue for greater mutual attention and relationship in the sort of frenetic, rapid-fire manner that typifies contemporary media interaction.
But this is to quibble; to call the event a success and enjoyable would be a powerful understatement. Rushkoff himself was frank, open, extremely articulate, and keen to encourage his audience to pursue real, in-person, local relationships without a wholesale rejection of digital technology. (This was particularly encouraging for me: I’m a telecomms engineer by trade, and have a special stake in this being possible). So many fascinating ideas came in such a short span that I had trouble falling asleep that night, and reminded me yet again why I love good books.
Just a half hour after listening to the well-honed and comforting words of Rabbi Harold Kushner, the Writerfest audience was confronted with a real and relevant illustration of “when bad things happen to good people,” to borrow from Rabbi Kushner’s famous book. We encountered three novels about the suffering of children in Africa. But these novels and their authors – like Rabbi Kushner – are seeking to explore not merely suffering on its own, but rather the miraculous ability of humans to be resilient in the face of mass repression.
Host Steven Hayward – author of The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke – told us we were in for an “amazing night” and then suggested a unifying theme for the discussion: to imagine the future, we must reimagine the idea of the child.
Meanwhile, I had not read the three featured novels nor had I previously encountered these authors (to my own embarrassment). Fortunately, they read selected passages and then engaged in a dynamic discussion.
First, Emmanuel Dongala read from Johnny Mad Dog (an English translation from the original Johnny Chien Méchant ). Dongala, a chemist and academic who fled Congo in the late 1990’s, writes of gross inhumanity – expressed through the rampages of a militiaman – and, in the same stroke, of the kindness of humanity. We begin to sense the fog of war, the chaotic clashes between White soldiers and indigenous rebels, and the sense of abandonment felt by locals when these soldiers save elites and their puppies, but leave innocent civilians – babies among them – to die. The second excerpt centers around the interaction between a refugee and a foreign journalist. We sense the refugee holding onto her hope of escaping the country that killed her father and raped her, and we come to terms with the preference of the international media for stories about Africa that display maximal gore. She reflects, “I don’t know if [my interview] was good television.” Overshadowing this uncomfortable exchange between foreigner and sufferer is the empathy evoked by Dongala, who explained that every human has the capacity to understand another’s pain if we so choose.
Secondly, Kenneth Bonert read from The Lion Seeker, his debut novel about a Jewish family in South Africa during the apartheid years. The community where the Helger family lives is multi-ethnic, with a large Jewish population – mostly Lithuanians who fled the Nazis. Here, in a profound refutation of the system of separateness and official racism, languages are intermixed; Yiddish and Afrikaans are tossed into the vernacular. The Lion Seeker, the object of considerable buzz in the literary circuit, is told through the perspective of a young Jewish immigrant, Isaac. As someone who is Jewish as well, and fascinated by Jewish life in South Africa, this is a novel I look forward to reading.
Finally, a jetlagged Mia Couto – in his first English-language live reading – read from The Tuner of Silences , the story of an eleven-year-old boy from Mozambique, Mwanito, who has a “talent for perfecting silences.” He recounts growing up in an isolated enclave named “Jezoosalem” by his father, who has “forsaken civilization,” as Couto put it. The English translation of the book is so evocative, and I imagine the original Portuguese is even more engaging for those who speak the language.
Having been offered a teaser of the three writers’ unique styles, the discussion period proved fascinating. Most resonant for me was the (albeit unresolved and mostly implicit) notion that those writing about Africa have some sort of a moral responsibility to represent the society and ‘values’ of the region with a measure of accuracy in order to combat the terrible insensitivities of the mass media in their depictions of African conflict and poverty. Yet this is of course a large burden to place on a novelist, and indeed these writers seem most concerned with remaining true to their characters’ journeys. Dongala emphasized that today’s African youth are tech-savvy and very much aware of current events. They are – like all of us – bombarded with information, but a lack of education leaves many unable to analyze and decode reality from fiction – video game violence from normative behaviour. (Here I was surprised to see Dongala make some sweeping generalizations about young people across an entire continent).
Through their awareness and connectivity, African youth are embracing the 21st century, however structural difficulties, including poverty, limit their participation in globalized networks. These tensions conjure intriguing characters, as youth negotiate so many influences and possibilities. The child suffers at times, but is also full of life, kindness, and happiness, as Couto sought to emphasize (and which Rabbi Kushner might explain as an indication of God’s presence – that is, the ability of the child to emerge from the horrors of tribal violence and maintain their will to meaning). Wise words to end a riveting conversation with three remarkable and unique novelists.
The Fourth Stage of the NAC was a full house as Canadian poet and Carleton University’s Armand Garnet Ruffo took to the stage to introduce his dear friend Richard Van Camp. He talked about the many accomplishments of the writer including his phenomenal novel The Lesser Blessed , now a film which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the many awards and accomplishments Van Camp has achieved through his writing. Ruffo recounts a recent conversation with Van Camp in which he said that he likes words that he can feel, stories that stir his blood which is exactly how Armand Garnet Ruffo introduces the radio play the audience is about to be a part of.
Host Shelagh Rogers of CBC Radio then took to the stage to discuss her recent time spent observing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission where she learned exactly how important it is to hear Aboriginal stories from Aboriginal writers themselves which is part of the reason that Van Camp’s work is such a staple of CBC’s The Next Chapter, aside from it’s sheer brilliance. The radio play was an incredible journey, the only way I can think to describe it, the audience was taken on by actors Craig Lauzon, Chris Cound, Russell Bull, and Leela Gilday. A phenomenal cast who were able to bring the vivid images of the story to life, along with the help of the woman who adapted the story for radio, Reneltta Arluk. The central character of the story, Flinch, is a Dogrib man who has found himself caught up in a drug dealing gang and on one of his drops he encounters two men who lead him to a community of Aboriginal people who call themselves “The Not Even Counted.” When he meets these people he comes to realize that the path he’s been on has lead him to this moment and it is through them that he discovers his true power and his destiny that will lead his people home.
After the play ended, Van Camp and Rogers took the stage together to discuss channeling, storytelling, and hardening nipples. Van Camp describes the way in which the story was brought to life on paper, he united the ideas of all the horrible gang killings that were taking place while he lived in B.C. With a story from his home town newspaper about a man he knew all his life who narrowly avoided being incinerated by lightning. The reason he felt it would be amazing to turn into a radio play is, he says, that radio is what connects Canada, more than television can. His characters, like Flinch just come to him and he channels all their thoughts, emotions, feelings and ultimately ends up with a story. They key, Van Camp says, is trusting what it is that his characters want to do.
When asked about the theme of transformation in his work, Van Camp tells the audience the Dogrib creation story, and a story of his own encounter with one of the last shifters. But something that really struck him during the time he was writing the short story that the play is based on, was something a friend of his said concerning ninjas. Van Camp has a fascination with them, and his friend was asking why, and then reveals that she knows her own secret about ninjas. Van Camp asks what this secret is, and he hears her say “you have to die first before you can become one,” something his friend tells him she never said. It was in this moment of channeling that he found a kind of transformation that lies behind the story. Flinch must die in order to gain all of his powers and the life he envisions for himself with his wife and children. In an extremely poetic ending to the night, Van Camp told Rogers that he felt it was his job to braid heaven and earth and to bring peace to people’s lives through his writing. Which is exactly how the audience felt after having watched his incredible story of transformation performed as a lice radio play.
