Focus 580; Interview with Douglas Glover

In this our focus 580 will be talking with writer Douglas Glover. He was born in Canada and was raised on his family's farm in southwestern Ontario he studied philosophy at York University and at University of Edinburgh. After that he worked as a journalist and a newspaper journalist for papers around Canada New Brunswick Ontario Quebec and Scotch one. Then he went to the Iowa Writers Workshop where he got his MFA in 1982 and he has published five collections of stories for novels a book of essays and his novel El won Canada's top literary prizes the Governor-General's Award for fiction in 2003. He's taught a number of places in this country and at present he teaches at a Vermont College in Montpelier Vermont in the MFA writing program there. He's visiting the campus here to talk with some young writers here at the University and also to do a reading from his work. And if you're interested in meeting him and hearing more from him he'll be doing a reading today at the author's corner of the Union bookstore on Wright Street on the campus that's 4:30 this afternoon. And of course here on the program

as we talk if you have questions you can call in and talk with him. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 is the number for Champaign Urbana. We do also have a toll free line that's going anywhere that you can hear us. And that is eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5. Well thanks very much for being here. Thank you Rick thank you for having me. Do you want. I've. This is kind of a lame question to start out with but it does good as any other I suppose. Do you think of yourself particularly as being a Canadian author as I'm sure that when people when people identify you that they always mention the fact that well yeah and you you were born in Canada and your writing has Canadian themes in it or at least to this particular book is about Canada before it was Canada. You know I do think of myself the Canadian writer and it's kind of an odd life I've led because I've lived outside of Canada more than I've lived inside Canada. And that's a constant source of puzzle to me and other people as well. But

it's an odd sort of situation where in fact you kind of person who goes outside the place he loves in order to understand it in order to see it better in some way. You know there's a tradition of that amongst American writers as well. And and the people that I kind of grew up admiring. Like Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Gertrude Stein there's a whole generation of Americans who went somewhere else to find their voices as writers and I think I kind of modeled myself on them in some way. And then I kind of got stuck here because I got married and and then I got divorced and I have children and I stay here I think in the normal course of events I would have wandered off somewhere else as well. But here I am. It seems maybe there's maybe it's not mysterious but it seems in a way also a little bit too bad that he didn't in Canada. There are a lot of really fine writers in Canada and they write generally speaking in English. So there's not a problem of a language barrier and yet certainly there are some Canadian writers that Margaret Atwood and

Michael and dodge and you know people like that who are well known but there are a lot of really good Canadian writers that are not known particularly well in the United States. And you wonder why why exactly is that is there some sort of resistance I want aircon readers. Well and after today though of course I'll be much better you'll be much better no. Is it a matter of there's some resistance is that American. There's some gulf between Canadian publishers and American publishers are. Well there is I mean I think people don't understand it at all that that in fact for example publishing rights are sold by nation by political boundaries. There is when you sell a book in Canada you sell it to a Canadian publisher and they have the world rights or they have the North American rights where they have just the Canadian rights if you sell in the United States first of all you sell the American rights not the Canadian rights often they bundle them together but there's a little border thing that that's actually getting very much fudged by Amazon Dot com right now because there's a thing in the publishing world because Amazon can order books from Britain or order books from Canada and

sell them here which is illegal. Very interesting. But nevertheless what you're saying is true and a Canadian It's not exactly a permeable border and it is puzzling what books actually become popular. It's almost like a sweepstakes you know. Oh you made it in the States but you don't know why. He's very hard to explain. Actually why do you think. Do you have any sort of clue as to why it is that particular books by Canadian writers do end up being big sellers in the United States and get a lot of attention in America. Well you know Margaret Atwood is a is a particular case and of course she was educated here she did a degree at Harvard and and sort of understood America in a certain way. That doesn't explain why her novel surfacing became famous It became famous because in fact she just she caught the wave of a rising wave of feminism at that time. She wrote a book called The Edible Woman which was about anorexia and then she wrote surfacing which was about a woman sort of discovering herself against a man and and she just took off because of that and that was a bit of luck. Which doesn't mean that

she's not also a great writer. But would she have been as famous as she is without that I don't know. Another famous Canadian who's not Canadian I mean he was originally from. It was all Sri Lanka now so interesting and again he's become famous mainly on the strength of the movie this book rather than his book itself but his earlier books were rather experimental but oddly enough they they were you know you could find them in Britain and you could find them in the collected works of Billy the Kid is a very experimental little book but you can find it everywhere and it came out. I don't I don't understand these things in a suit here. I'm interested in having a talk about the book the one the Governor-General's already has I think it's a great story but it's in the book here and there are definitely swipes swipes at Canadian culture generally and at the idea maybe the idea of Canadian writing which It's a funny thing I think I've travel enough in Canada listening to enough Canadian

media but I know two things about the Canadians One is that they enjoy comparing themselves to the United States in the sense that they like to feel superior to United States and in this and also at the same time there is sort of some kind of inferiority thing going on among Canadians and I don't know whether it is they they they fear that can it can it is ultimately a very provincial sort of place or what it is there's this odd sort of thing that we're both of those things are going on I'd like. I respectfully disagree with that slightly. I'm not sure that it is actually inferior. It looks like inferiority but in fact it's what I think it is more is a sense that the discourse of authority the discourse the public discourse the public way of talking about ourselves is not the real way of talking about ourselves so that you know we had to live with the discourse of British imperialism and we had to live with the discourse of American hegemony in the world and and we

worry about that of course in a certain way but what we realize is that actually underneath that we're something else. And so that's the root of Canadian humor and it's the root of that sense that you maybe think that it's an inferiority but what it is it's a recognition that we're actually not what people are saying we are. And that's what's more interesting and that's the root of Canadian humor and that's the humor that actually travels actually quite well down to the States I mean the people who started Saturday Night Live were Canadians you know and and a lot of humor writers in Hollywood are comedians because they have an understanding of the irony that in fact isn't in some ways American. Douglas Glover as our guest is writer and is here visiting the campus to talk about his writing. He is one a lot of recognition for his work including Canada's top literary prizes the Governor-General's Award for fiction. That was last year for his novel. He's also written several novels collections of stories book of essays. If you're interested in reading his work you can head down to the bookstore and see if you can just

see if you can find it and he will be giving a reading. As I mentioned the beginning of the line a union bookstore this afternoon at 4:30 on Wright Street. And so you can stop and of course questions here welcome to 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. I'm interested in having you talk about it all because I think it's a great story. This is apparently based on something that really happened. Yes may have happened yes. So there's even a question about a question of whether is does is does qualify as legend or is it quasi history or what you can see with history it in a funny way. Maybe it's based on the story that's actually just an almost a footnote in Canadian history. And it's actually pretty Canadian history because what happened was the French explorers Carcieri found Canada in the 15th 30s and then and then discuss. And then there were three expeditions at that time to try to

colonize the place. And every one of them failed and then the actual colonise ation of the country didn't start until 16 hundreds. 60 years later 60 to 50 60 years later. So that's that's kind of interesting So this is earlier than the beginning and apparently on the last expedition they were coming over and the man in charge was kind of march and it kind of a cruel disciplinary and he got mad at this woman on the boat for some reason or she may have been his niece who knows that's one of the stories he got mad at her and he dumped her on an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence a very barren island called the called of the isle of demons because there were all of these shrieks. Turns out streaks were birds right there. But. They dumped her there and her boyfriend apparently jumped overboard at the last minute to stay with her and her old Nanny was with her and the boyfriend died in the night he died and she was pregnant and she had a baby and it died. And then the story is that she lived there for two years and was rescued by French fisherman which is an odd oddity in itself.

This is the official story of the discovery of Canada but in fact there were French fishermen coming over all the time. You know everybody knew Canada was there but it was officially discovered by current you. So this is a story that has been told but no one knows whether in fact it actually happened there were three versions of it published in the 16th century in France one actually was written as a short story by the sister of the King of France Marguerite and of our and in a book of short stories called the heptathlon. And then two other people who were caused by historians what went for historians at the time. Kind of like modern bloggers is what they were with with as much allegiance to the truth. You know we don't we distrust what happens in blogs sometimes they're very truthful and sometimes Anyway these guys one of them claim to actually interviewed her. But that's even doubtful. So what about what is it about this story that got your attention and you thought that's that's a nice idea and I'll see where I can take that and see what I can do with it.

It was I just jumped at the idea that a woman had been dumped on an island and that she had survived when. The official French expeditions with all their equipment and their impedimenta and their supplies couldn't survive on that. They all failed and somehow this woman all by herself managed to stay alive for two winters and in a really cold part of Canada I have to tell you it's a place that was very beautiful too but I thought oh my God she's a survivor. My God this is this is the kind of image of human sort of courage and persistence that I you know that I value and I to write a story about. So then from that point you had to I guess imagine what sort of person this would have had to write in first to get her into that into trouble. So much of that the guy said he just dumped her and then what perhaps would allow her to survive and I think you're imagining a young woman who has both literate and sexual which certainly would have been two

qualities frowned upon then and we're not even so sure now. Isn't that right. No but. Well that would there were bits of clues you know in in those early written accounts I mean one story was that it was a sexual. Liaison that got her into trouble so that was a hint. But again you know the question was What sort of person. Well I was a sexual thing then maybe she did others earlier and maybe that's why she was in trouble with her father and maybe she really. And then I discovered that in those days if you wanted to get rid of extra children especially daughters you could put them in nunneries and then at that stage they were actually legally dead and you didn't have to give them a dowry or have any responsibility for them so that was an alternative so it was either go to Canada or put in a nunnery in. And then at the same time I wanted her to be open in that time reading as a sign of openness of curiosity. She had to I think one of the ways you

survive in a world like that is that you're open and curious as opposed to coming the other colonists come and what they do is they try to establish another France and Canada and that's the recipe for disaster. And then her boyfriend in the book is. I'm going to go off your topic frequently but one of the things that also made this I couldn't get her going actually just on the strength of her own personality I had to find something else. And it wasn't till I realized or discovered that tennis was a very popular sport in France at the time that I really began to get this book going and I realized that her boyfriend could be a tennis pro sort of guy you know. And and what happens is he's the an alternate character so he's on the island with her and what he does is he's just mystified by this place and what he does is he starts making a tennis court which is the image of the Imperialist the colonizers from Europe coming and trying to model Canada on Europe he comes and models the tennis court the first tennis court in Canada for a tennis court in North America and he dies very quickly because change is a disaster for him whereas she is

constantly almost on the edge of dying but pulling herself back by being flexible by being curious by being open to the other. Yeah and also be because she is. She's helped by the indigenous people right who were always helping the French until they got to the till they realized that the French was always going to kidnap their people and take them back to France and and then they started to drift into the forest and leave the French alone to die on their own. Yeah she's open I mean the reason the Indians helped her is because she's actually available to the Indians I mean that's that's the secret there it's not there it's not just that they are kind to her but in fact she. She isn't trying to impose her world on them in fact she she just lets them impose on her and that's what happens to her in the sense that she she allows their myths of their their ways to permeate her. They're in it and I hope this this is not giving too much of the book. But what happens after the after the boyfriend who is the the tennis playing Playboy dies

and her nurse maid dies and she's alone. A bear wanders a lot one day and she thinks well that's it she's going to be attacked by the bear and the bear dies and has a heart attack I think it's something like a very convenient Yeah the bear does and what she does in order to survive is that she slices into the bear and gets into into the cavity of the animal which of course is warm and she doesn't have proper clothing and it's cold and harsh and that she she thinks Well this is one thing I can do to to survive. So she's there and then she emerges. There is an Indigenous man who sees this happen and has no idea I suppose this would be something of the equivalent of seeing a person land from another planet but also hooks into apparently a myth of the indigenous people have about a woman who comes out of a bear. What is it I have that right close is not not exactly. What happens is that he's following he's doing one of those dream hunts

he's he's thinks he's tracking this bear because he's supposed to somehow somehow or other mythologically. And what happens is that in fact in that's an image of how I see the interaction between the ideas of Western Europe as the colonized Canada and the ideas of the indigenous peoples What happens is that that we coming here interrupted their train of thought. And so the train of thought has him trace a Chevy Chase in his sort of spirit bear and the Spirit Bear meets the white woman and dies and and then he sees the white woman being born out of the spirit bear which. As he stands stays with her. He's gradually realizing this sort of tragedy and she's realizing the tragedy of what's happened because his story has now been completely ripped apart by her and then a new myth as has been born out of that and that. And so it's it's it's an image of the sort of sadness of what happened in that interaction. So it's not that she really lives it's that she destroys this myth it's not that.

And though in the process that's that's really the key to her survival. Right. Well he is the key. He's first he's the first key to her survival Yeah yeah he's the one who builds them. He doesn't build it's not the comic right because he he's one of those guys he's a he's a you know what who can't build a snow house. He says well my cousin always does that for us. So he gets into her hut but he feeds her and and sort of brings her back to life. And then when he leaves he leaves it with some seals. So there you get but I guess I sort of feel the sense in which is she hurt her survival. And there's there's almost a kind of metamorphosis that that happens with her identifying with the bear and with with the people of the place and that's somehow because she survives because she becomes something different than she was before. She's as I say she's open and permeable to these other cultural

influences in her way. And and that makes it sound abstract and very serious because in fact it's quite a comic book. And and it's also sexual I mean what his relationship with her is sexual. In her case it's always a surprise to me she thinks of sex as being somewhat romantic and for him it's kind of hygenic and and she doesn't feel that she he actually thinks she's kind of ugly because she's skinny. And so it's very it's She's on the brink of starvation this break of starvation and in fact she. Well but she. She's open to this world and that's just the beginning I mean he's there for a while and then he disappears and then she goes and she also discovers a band of Montigny Indians who would be living on the coast there and lives near them for a while and hangs out with them. What is an essentially female shaman. Who has bare stuff there's bare imagery all the way through the book the book is Elle. And as I mentioned this book won Canada's top literary prizes the Governor-General's Award for fiction in

2003. It's published by goose lane and it is now and I think it's a wonderful book and I think it really is very funny. There's a lot of funny things in it. I guess I would caution people that it goes fairly frank in its discussion of sexual matters and other things physical. So I don't I don't want someone to go out and buy it and then say I'm shocked by what's in there. But I think that it's really a very funny book. Well it's you know that sort of thing that you're talking about. It's kind of I mean in the sense I got very interested in what was going on in France at the time and of course this Francois Rabelais is a character in the novel when she comes back to France. She's treated by a doctor who's known as F in the novel but he has all these. He's a writer and it's it's really Francois Rabelais. And and so in many ways. The taste of the book is Revelation you know of necessity and at the same time one wants to create the atmosphere that one would think was kind of

realistic and they didn't have flush toilets or anything remotely like that. Life was life was grim at the same time. I'm sure that some people might say you know after having read this character they they would say well this isn't this is not a woman of the 15 hundreds. That's right. And I deliberately so deliberately. I mean I have I have an earlier historical novel The Life and Times of captain and where I have a half native man sit on a hilltop and look down into a valley in upstate New York and say I wanted to be an interstate highway here. You know the character character says What's an interstate highway and the guy says I don't know. So I deliberately also threading through a sense of anachronism. At one point she says if the King of France I was just reading this I was looking at again this morning you're not forgotten the part where she looks at the King of France and says she's not very good at crisis management. You know it is this way she talks

that are just not 16th century ago. But the reason for that too is partly again it almost the sense of I want to give the reader a sense of verisimilitude of reality but that doesn't mean that I can actually write like a woman of the 16th century. What that what that means to me is that I want to make it feel like it's real to you or me. That is she's a 19 year old girl who's sexually a little promiscuous a little wild and she reads books she's an intellectual. She likes watching people being burned at the stake I mean she has eccentric taste. So I imagine her as kind of. A person of the two you know of the current century a girl on the street who's from a well-off home and who is wild you know and I want her to think like that I want her to. And so that's. And I think that that's in fact the analogy I mean she would have been like anybody now. So I give her that. I give her that. Also I have also a sense my sense of the way

history works is that our consciousness our contemporary consciousness is is whether we know it or not is just threaded with historical material and so that we're not so different from them in many ways. I wonder I guess about his story and there are so many things that can be called historical fiction and to what extent as a writer you feel obligated to make this world that you're creating as as much as faithful to the 16th century as possible or whether you feel that that's really not know you've chosen that as a setting you want to make it feel right but that you're not. Your intent really isn't to tell a story about the 16th century. That's not as though I know what you're saying I mean it's a it's a subtle and sort of complex distinction to make. In fact I try very hard to be accurate. But at the same time there's certain sorts of things I want to say that I can't possibly be said if I just

have the characters in the 16th century she she in a sense she has to have read everything that's been written since in order to say some of the things she says she has to read everything that's been written since then. I mean she knows what something that John she knows about John Calvin's theocratic city in Switzerland she knows what Luther said about this and that you know she knows about the historical development of Protestantism she knows about the history of books she knows about all sorts of things that she couldn't really possible. You know and and that's and so there's a certain lack of verisimilitude there. But at the same time there's an accuracy when she sees a ship at certain kind of ship Well that was exactly the kind of ship that they had in those days and it's in contrast to the ships that travel across the ocean and he like caravels And that's what's called and I know for a Spanish ship so and so forth you know I worked on that very carefully so that there's a I'd like to have this kind of I use the word flickering to describe good literature

an awful lot of flickers back and forth between this and that all the time. So I wanted to be serious and then I wanted to be funny I wanted to be accurate and I wanted to be anachronistic. I never want to sit and be one thing. And when you write in a story again you say there's there's historical novels and there are other historical novels there's of course the sort of costume epic The big thing where you have people talking in stilted language and there's that and that's kind of there's historical romance I grew up loving kind of romantic novels of the boyhood novels of GA handi and Thomas because Dane is a Canadian writer who used to edit Reader's Digest wrote a lot of books and remember Tyrone Power made a movie out of his novel The Black Rose was just fascinating I love that you love that man. Yes it's a great book. I love the book and I love that movie. Oh Orson Wells What a ham. I love the movie. Yeah. Oh man this is a connection that's yes. Well that's stuff that's stuffed in the back of my head and yet I I mean I can't write that straight faced myself you know.

So I write something else I write a much more contemporary take on that sort of thing. I haven't thought about that in a while. Yes I mean I don't you know I mean the title of this book is The French pronoun for she but what I'm thinking about is the writer Haggard novel she that and he wrote King Solomon's Mines another book in my childhood. These are those kind of historical adventure stories that I grew up on. And she of course was made into a movie with Ursula Andress in the 1960s members and she was big posters of her and that skin bikini The fur was amazing I think you're thinking of Raquel Welch. Or am I mistaken. I may have missed what was our address was the movie. Oh yes definitely. Do your thing I think you think I'm thinking of a different post. I'm thinking you may be right. I couldn't help thinking of the movie you know in which you pay played a cavewoman and it was about was it about prehistoric about our history but I think that was really you know I think she was like that you maybe you may be right.

I mean really I'm the kind of person that has the courage of my mistakes and I'm quite willing to go with them when I'm writing. Right. Well somebody knows they can call and tell us. Kit Well yes I'm I'm told. Yes well we can go into this later I think I'm getting a thumbs up from my control room saying yes that you were thinking of Raquel Welch and was it One Million Years B.C. was that the name of the movie. Yes he was so that's the poster I think you know I thought well I think I think that that is ok but I do but I certainly remember that. Yes I think that is you know this is a kind of a side reference to its Rider Haggard and that there you go. Well our guest Douglas Glover. He's now teaching at Vermont College Montpelier Vermont in the MFA writing program there has taught some other universities here in the United States was born and grew up in Canada. He is the author of Five story collections four novels a book of essays and this book that we have talked about. L It won the Governor General's Award for fiction in 2003 that's Canada's top literary prize

is published by goose lane conditions. He's here visiting the campus will be giving a reading this afternoon 4:30 the author's corner of the A-line Union bookstore that's on the right street questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 I would have color here in Champagne County and in line one would stop with them. Well good morning. Couple of things you know since you've been sort of doing the adolescent confessional there are a bunch of men first landed us in her. Flesh Tone bikini that's what I remember from my adolescence but was it. Yes well it's not the not the third but she was in the movie. Right. Yes we're already got that part right. Well again I this is a cheap shot but it's just strikes me as kind of odd that the most prestigious prize in Canada is the Governor General who is an emissary from the Queen but which actually does get to me to the point how much of this is sort of a consciously trying to look

into the French sort of antecedents of the of the Canadian experience or how much of it is is there actually some sort of a way that this is reflects your understanding and awareness of French culture because of an emphasis on trying to. To the two parts of the Canadian polity together you get my drift. Kind of yes I do sort of get it and it's a it's a it's a good question in terms of my writing. First of all I grew up in Southern Ontario and both sides of my family were United Empire Loyalists which as you know I grew up in a family that called them Q backers. And so the French have always been my you know mythical other my right. To dream of knitting the cultures together is always there and it's completely false of course.

But that's not exactly what led me to this it's much more it's actually more interesting story I. Haven't come away and finding myself living in the United States I started reading Canadian his history and kind of filling in what I figured were my own blanks. And out of that came the first historical novel which was really a story about the United Empire Loyalists who came out of in this in that case out of upstate New York and ended up living exactly where I grew up. And and what I was doing was trying to re-imagine a kind of basic psychic traumatic event from my family's history. And and I felt that that was really really helpful so I had this has this interest in in basically fill in filling in gaps by writing fictional stories about earlier events. And so then I happened upon this woman and I thought that I would do that. It wasn't in particular meant to do anything for the French it was mostly for me.

But the other thing that went on while this was going on was that I've been very influenced by French Canadian writers. Problem and greatest influences as a novelist named Can AQIM who wrote four novels before he committed suicide in 1977. And it was his analysis of the French-Canadian the history of French Canada and French Canadian politics that actually drove my own sense of Canadian politics in general. So that in fact in my understanding that drives this new novel is built on something that I learned from French Canada in a different context. I missed it. Name what was the best Hubert. I can't. AQ You and I. Have actually over the years been trying to get his books republished there of course republished in Canada but no one in the United States has ever paid much attention to him he's a brilliant modernist writer and I keep trying to get his work printed down here.

So you were to put a less subtle point on it you or your family comes from the Tories who are sort of ethnically cleansed out of upstate New York exactly exactly the right way of saying and and ethnically cleansed out of it of what became what was becoming the United States but also betrayed by the imperial power they had. Allied themselves with they were really promised. I mean they they were alliances to Britain were often based on the belief that Britain would win no matter what and and they would have a position of power in the colonies and they they were dumped on Virgin farmland virgin forest land and in you know Ontario where you know for a long time the people that I grew up with from used whisky as the medium of trade. There wasn't any money. So they felt betrayed and and a lot of that consciousness I grew up with is a kind of double consciousness

like where more pro-British than the British themselves because we in fact were betrayed by the British and you see this I mean it was one of the ways I understood this was by talking to Cubans in Vietnamese in this country because it's exactly what you would find that the most pro-American communities are the Cuban refugees in Miami and and some of the South Vietnamese people who had to be transplanted here. Fascinating to watch the way these discourses spread through people in historically. This would also sort of underpin the animosity to the French too because the French were I guess historically seen as the. Actors are you saying the British betrayed by losing but they also probably would have betrayed been seen as betraying by not putting support in when people were relocating and I want sort of right. I mean they did to a certain scent they certainly gave people land but it was kind of empty land. They also betrayed by very quickly a sort of accommodating themselves to the United States. You know I

mean. Once the United States had been formed in the British then began there was another war and there was another small war yes but they almost left left us alone there and then they gave away huge chunks and we've always felt badly that the British kept giving away huge chunks of the country to you guys. Sorry. My ex-wifes I want to add a new every time we drove. Every time we used to drive across the border to start addressing my wife as you guys. And you know you live here so. Right all the time I thank you very much. OK thank you for calling. Our guest is Canadian writer Douglas Glover he's here visiting the campus to talk about his writing. As I mentioned he'll be doing a reading at the author's corner of the line in union bookstore so afternoon for 30 questions welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Just a bit to pick up on the point that the caller made about the fact that their ward this award that we mentioned that God was the Governor General and he is the he's the representative of the Queen and and she

it's a she. Oh pardon me the current governor general is in fact is a fact and ethnically Chinese and that's also very interesting and which makes me interested in having a talk a little bit about. And this may differ depending on who you ask about what people in Canada what exactly is the relationship between Canada and and Britain. Now now oh now well we have our own I mean we now have a constitution that's up until the 80s when Trudeau pushed through the. What is our constitution. I have the highest. Sort of a legal document with the British North America Act and its amended acts in Parliament and England. You know what de facto we were an independent country but in some ways we were still connected but that's now not the case but we are connected in terms of a kind of protocol in a way the queen of England is the queen of Canada. And the and the head of government is technically the Governor-General. It's a bit like in some

countries where you have a president and a premier in France you have a president elected president which is more of a figurehead than a actual political leader. And that's much the way it is and that in the Governor-General is not it is not an English person. It's always Canadian we appoint her ourselves. But she lives in of palatial residence not far from the parliament buildings and. And. Everybody complains she spends too much money just like the Queen. Well as you know I love it when anybody comes along for example or something. Maybe we should redesign the currency take the queen of. Sure people say that all the time I don't know. We do we we've got kingfishers and we have animals on it a lot. Still a little picture of the Queen. But now I mean we're not it's not a it's not a country that I think worries about it that much anymore. Sometimes they do and sometimes not but you know it's not actually that important because she doesn't impinge. On the country there's no political pressure that comes from Britain at all. So well I wasn't.

I guess I wasn't really thinking about that you know what you are talking about the irony of getting an award from the Governor-General is interesting and in fact what does happen is there are periods of time and some people who that really irks For example my my this man who barrack how the French comedian writer was given the Governor-General's award and think one thousand seventy and refused on the grounds that he was a separatist and didn't approve of the Queen. So that happens I mean it does happen. I don't know what they were. You know what they change it to. It's a little bit of a weird thing Governor General Governor General. We talked about a lot about the book. Would you like to read a little something from Dell. Oh my God. If you have an idea you have something well I guess I really don't. And if you do if you'd rather not. You know what have you I'm just thinking you know folks who are listening might like to have a little taste of what of this book and your writing and since you write here.

Well just a little. OK I'm going to say this is the part I mean it is a funny book. And on one level another level is very serious and it's a novel of ideas but it's also a book and you said as I say that I take little cracks at Canadian literature and Canadian culture but that's that's always with with incredible affection. You have to understand that we get to say things about our country. But at the same time their affection is there and there's this moment when she's just being rescued where she suddenly looks back at the country just as she's realizes that she's leaving. OK. So there we imagine her on the coast at an Indian encampment and there's a big ship whaler that is arrived and. The people are trading at the beach and she realizes that she's going to be taken away. The dog snarls barks a warning the boy looks over his shoulder agonizing over the orgy of avarice at the shoreline. The funny is missing. The sun is setting smoky lanterns blaze aboard the ship which looms like a dark cloud or sorcerers

Ireland just beyond her whale breaches rolling head to tail back into the sea. A cormorant a black snake with wings skin silently above the surface of the water. Ducks rise and fall on invisible waves. I am reminded of the mysterious beauty of Canada piece just beyond the ambit of human squalor. Silence split by the call of a bird or the cry of a wolf. The antiseptic and ghostly whiteness when winter comes. Already I missed the place. Now and again I have thought about the monk who asked Saint Brendan to leave him behind in Canada. There was a you know there's an Irish Legend Saint Brendan discovered North America and part of that legend is that when he came back one of the monks stayed. So she says now and again I have thought about that monk who asked think Brenden to leave him behind in Canada or as they called it the fortunate Isles. What impulse led to this act of reckless self abandonment and an abandonment. I imagine him taunts her and cassock kneeling on the glistening shingle praying as the odd round

ship vanishes eastward into the ocean fog when it is gone. He stands and turns with his arms outstretched face inland with the whole vast continent before him. Everything new. His whole life to make for himself. Snowflakes beginning to fall. God on the wind. There is a lot of really good writing in there. In the book I really I really would recommend it. Thank you. Something that I don't I don't know if this is making too much of it but in the book Notes from a prodigal son in the first piece you write about something happened when you were at the Writer's Workshop and the person who was the who came in to be the writing teacher. And you say in this particular essay that this guy was the best writing teacher you ever had. He was somebody from Kansas who showed up at the last minute as a replacement for somebody who got sick and he said first day of classes he comes

in without saying anything he picks up a piece of chalk and he writes across the full length of the blackboard in huge looping letters remember to tell them the novel is a poem. Yes. Tell me about that in what you know. In what sense is a novel. If you're I guess if you're doing it the right way. In what sense is a novel appalling. Well in a sense it in the sense that it's a contrast with the kind of prevailing idea that a novel is just a story that seems to be as real as we can make it so you know that old workshop saw you know and he was coming at it from a completely different side. He had a kind of I mean I make you know he did he was from Kansas and but he was in fact a very sophisticated man in terms of his understanding of literature not the people from Kansas can't be sophisticated but he presented himself as a kind of rural cans and he would wear cowboy boots and in a leather vest and and talk like that a little bit. He would always take the elevator up to the from the

first floor to the second floor. And he said if God had intended us to walk on stairs he wouldn't have invented elevators with this kind of God. But anyway I know what he meant was that in fact as opposed to just telling a story that seems realistic that in fact novels and short stories are actually heavily constructed and heavily patterned. Patterned means use of kind of various sorts of repetitive devices that seem on one hand to be very poetic rather than what we had done if I was poetry rather than with telling a story. So he was coming out from the side well let's look at the patterns that make up a novel instead of worrying about the story. That's something else and that was basically the lesson of the class that he taught with. We're going to look at each of these novels want to weaken we're going to we're going to pull out devices and structures. That are essential to this book or that book and that we might not notice if we're just reading for a story or reading to identify with character. Does that does that effect. Note that today the way that you read can you

just pick up a book and just read it or are when you read are you are you always paying attention to how it's put together. I am actually I don't know how the I'm always making notes but I mean that's I think it comes with the job of being a writer and I REMEMBERED THERE'S and Virginia Woolf's diaries there's one moment when she sits back and says I don't know how anybody can read without a pencil in hand. You know and so that's I mean just always sitting there. I mean it's part of your my reading experience of reading any book is I'm just sitting there saying oh how's the set up what's right what's the character what's the novelist doing what tricks is he pulling off what's being repeated why is it being repeated I mean what's he saying that he's telling me and what underneath is he telling me or she telling me. I think that in fact it makes the experience of the book much more interesting at what it does mean is that I tend not to be too interested in books that are just stories. I'm ahead. I love mystery novels which are just

John or novels so I mean whenever I want to relax I sit back and read mystery novels. So what about them. Is it that you like particular I don't know that's just the way I was like watching television I guess you know sometimes you're like a veggie but I don't quite like you know I do. I did I wrote a detective novel my first published novel with a kind of perfect detective novel so I mean I do like the genre even that way. It seems to me I mean going back to this idea of the bit about the novel being a poem that what what what poems do is that they they do indeed tell stories but they don't they do they do it in. I think of them as doing that mostly with creating images to try to just just take the story and to tell a story but to strip it down to that to the bare sort of nubs of the story almost to get it you get a more emotional level rather than a more. Right but it's not it's also not just a matter of the image because in fact the emotion that you get out of a poem often has a lot to do with rhythm and stress. I mean it's not.

It's also the AB AB of rhyme and it's the internal rhymes and this is that and that's the trickier the spondee or the foot you're going to what it's all those things going on as well I mean the image that the poem projects into consciousness is not just maybe the word or the object of the poem like an ode to a Grecian Urn it's not just the Grecian Urn. It's not just the meaning of the word it's the it's the motional impact of the patterns as well and that's what he's talking about so in a book like El. It's heavily heavily patterned even though it's also funny and it's a story it's an adventure story it's a cracked romance and and it's comedy but it's also a book in which. Her experience of coming to Canada is paralleled with the experience of her boyfriend who is a counter. I mean he does it the wrong way and dies. The man who puts her on shore also does it the wrong way and dies. She has a

dog with her who in fact survives in Canada. And he wasn't having a very good time on shipping but in Canada he does better and better. And in fact he's the one who stays there in Canada. And then and then more parallels into the patterning is everywhere in the book when she comes back to France there's an Indian woman living in France there who should be friends and they build everything's a repetition. They build an Indian encampment in a field and in France. Just like the way that the guy builds the tennis court right. Exactly. And then. And the Indian woman in France as I say has been infected with Christianity she prays in a church as the way my woman has been infected as she says by savagery that's the way they talk then. And and so these there's this patterning that's going on beneath the level of story all through the book everything everything that happens in the book is an analogy or a reflection or a contrast to something else that's happening in the book.

And that is so as you thinking of how you talk about this with young people who want to be writers or maybe show talent for for being writers. How do you how do you teach a lesson like that about. The way that you tell stories or the way that you do it's got to be more than just one story. It's a lot of stories that get tangled up with each other. Well you know I teach I tend to teach it by first of all getting them to read. You know and I have a I have a series of books and stories that I assign people in order to teach them very very specific lessons about how things are patterned in stories and you know the most amazingly amazing stories are highly patterned as one story by the writer Bobbie and Maison. And I hope people haven't forgotten her yet but she was famous I mean critics were a bit hard on her because they called her Kmart. What she wrote Kmart realism she would write about people in Kentucky and Tennessee and and it diminished her in a cruel way because in fact she was a

highly intellectual writer with a Ph.D. and a dissertation on the bark off that was published as a book. And her stories are very patterned and beautifully built in images and repetitions and things even though they were both working class truck drivers. You don't know it but you feel it. So are we going on right now. Well actually I just finished something that's actually I think I finished it a few months ago and it's just coming out in Canada. I wrote a book like that say on Don Quixote and and the novel structure which is again me I mean I sit and think about this stuff all the time to try to make myself more interesting writer. Well thank you very much. Thank you Tony with us we certainly appreciate it our guest Douglas Glover he is now teaching at Vermont College in Montpelier Vermont and the MFA writing program there has authored several collections of stories and four novels and you might particularly want to look for Elle. It's a novel published by goose lane additions the one that won the Governor General's award he'll be giving doing a reading

and a book signing today at the author's corner of the line at Union bookstores afternoon 4:30 that's on the campus on Wright Street so that you could stop by and meet him and again thanks very very much. Thank you David.