David Adams Richards
David Adams Richards
The other night, I got an email from the local business development agency advising me that an announcement for my book launch was now listed in a municipal events-calendar. I clicked the link to see what it looked like and noticed that, in 38 minutes, there was a scheduled reading for Canadian author David Adams Richards at the public library. I jumped in the shower, jumped in my car, and broke the speed-limit.
David Adams Richards is easily the most famous writer to ever emerge from my native New Brunswick. He’s penned poetry, plays, non-fiction, and – most notably – fiction, including 14 novels, the latest Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul. He’s won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Governor General’s Award, and the esteemed Giller Prize, Canada’s top literary honour. He was supposed to speak in front of a Canadian-literature class I took in high school, but had previous commitments. In university, I read Richards’s first book, The Coming of Winter, but didn’t quite get it. When I lived in Taipei, I found a copy of his Mercy Among the Children and was drawn in deeply, transported back to my quirky and rural home province. Mercy is a good novel (it’s the one that won him the Giller), and I’ve been meaning to explore others, but there are so many books and so little time.
Richards’s stories are often set in the Miramichi, one of New Brunswick’s four main cities. Richards employs stark realism tinged with dark themes. Characters are raw and real and converse in the vernacular. There’s crime, clannishness, ostracism, hypocrisy, prejudice, and poverty. The duplicity of human society features prominently, as does ambiguity; it may be obvious who the victim is, but Richards’s heroes are harder to spot.
At the library, 30 people were seated quietly. Richards was standing off to the side, looking apprehensive or bored. There he was: a Canadian literary giant. Why wasn’t anyone talking to him?
“Excuse me. Do you have a pen?” I asked.
“Ah, no,” he said, patting his pockets, “but there’s one on the table.”
The table was laid out with his books, including his Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul. I grabbed the pen, signed my own book, and presented it to him. I thought he might wince, supply an insincere ‘Thanks,’ and toss it aside the instant I took my leave, but he seemed genuinely interested.
“You wrote this?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re from Saint John?”
“Yes. I read your Mercy Among the Children when I was living in Taiwan, and really enjoyed it.”
“You read it in Chinese?”
“No, in English.”
“Because that one was translated into Chinese. On the mainland, though.”
“Did it sell?”
“I have no idea, but I remember the guy who did it. He was very nice. He wrote me a couple times to ask what things were, you know, to explain words so he could translate them. I remember him asking what a marshmallow was and I had to explain the word ‘Legion.’ I suppose they wouldn’t have Legions in China. Whether it was translated well or not, I don’t know. The English version is that thick (two inches), the German edition that thick (three inches), but the Chinese translation is only about that thick (one inch).” Richards shrugged. “His English wasn’t perfect, but he was really nice.”
It was nearing that time, so I sat down, and the female MC introduced Mr. Richards – at length. But while she was talking, an interesting thing occurred. The author wasn’t really listening. Rather, he was reading my book. At one point, I heard him say to himself, “This is really interesting.” When it was time to take the stand, he took my book and his book to the podium. He set my book down and patted it. He looked at me and said, earnestly, “Thank you for the book.” Then he began to read.
The reading was followed by a Q&A. My questions, the first, were generic: “In fiction, do you know where you’re going? Do you have it planned, or just a rough idea?” I imagine he’s been asked that a thousand times. I should have asked something interesting like, “Is the hypocrisy of human society something you obsess about?” or “How much of wanting to be a writer was motivated by revenge?” Many writers are idealists and feel the need to comment on corruption and perversion. And it’s my theory that, for male writers at least, revenge is a key motivator, especially when starting out.
Writers hope to show every critic, every pretentious academic, every teacher who said, ‘Sorry, you don’t have it,’ that they do have it. Writers catalogue slights and conjure them when they need motivation. Mordecai Richler admitted this. So has Paul Theroux. In The Forest for the Trees, by Betsey Lerner, a book about writing and the business of writing, written by a publishing-industry insider for aspiring writers, the author talks about what motivates authors, and revenge is right up there with need-to-be-heard.
The revenge question was the one I should have posed, but no, I asked the most limp-wristed question imaginable.
In addition to novels, and in true New Brunswick fashion, Richards has penned books on hockey, fishing, and hunting. He recently wrote God Is, about his Catholic faith. Reportedly, this raised the collective eyebrow of the Canadian literary community, with Richards claiming he’s now something of a pariah. I’m not a Christian, so God Is is not a book for me (but neither are books like God is Not Great, though I consider Christopher Hitchens an important essayist and polemicist), but I found Richards’s reasons for writing such a book, and the related advice he gave, interesting.
“Write what you know,” he said. “Write what you want to. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t curb your opinions to fit with someone else’s, which is what a lot of writers do. At some point, someone is going to tell you you’re wrong anyway, so you may as well write what you believe.”
It was the final idea I’d never thought of before: people are going to call you down anyway, so why even begin to compromise? That’s bloody good advice. Who cares about that cacophonous clang from the peanut gallery? Write for yourself.
Writers are often outsiders, but Richards seems an outsider to other writers, a role he acknowledges and appears to revel in (see revenge). He talked about how some time after he’d won the Giller, he was kicked out of a Toronto bookstore because of his appearance, and that he frightened the receptionist at his Toronto publisher because he was dressed like a lumberjack. Along with his art-imitating-life approach to writing, this is part of the reason I like Mr. Richards. He’s an anti-intellectual intellectual.
Richards also discussed the difficulty of getting published: you approach a publisher who tells you need an agent. An agent asks you who your publisher is. He then relayed a couple of anecdotes about his younger days. His debut novel, the one I read in high school, was edited by the publisher’s son, though Richards insisted all the bits the kid “gutted” be stuffed back in!
The Q&A was followed by a signing, and the book I bought was one in the Penguin Books Extraordinary Canadians series. I’d read the series’ Mordecai Richler biography by M.G. Vassanji and had liked it, so I thought I’d check out Richards’s book on Lord Beaverbrook, a.k.a. Max Aitkin (1879-1964), a New Brunswick newspaper baron and the first lord of Fleet Street.
When I was a kid, I played hockey at the Lord Beaverbrook Arena and when I returned to Canada I worked briefly in a building called the Beaverbrook House. I’d been meaning to read about Beaverbrook anyway and knew of Richards’s book, so why not buy a signed copy from the writer himself?
Beaverbrook was a real life Duddy Kravitz. He started his first newspaper at the age of 13, sold bonds door to door, and moved to Montreal to work on the stock exchange. He had a stab at law in Saint John, but then moved to England where he got into politics and built a chain of newspapers. He once owned Rolls Royce. He bought his way into the House of Lords, and was a friend of Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill. Churchill made him a member of the wartime cabinet and put him charge of aircraft (Spitfire) production.
Beaverbrook cut an intriguing figure: a money man riddled with contradictions. He was both decent and deceitful, an uncouth colonial and a calculating aristocrat. Though he loved Britain and her empire, it was an unrequited adoration. But his efforts in Spitfire production made him a hero. Richards’s heroes are not always easy spot.
Despite all his success, Lord Beaverbrook, was – above all – an outsider. Who better than Richards, who grew up less than two blocks from the man, to write about him?
The other night, I got an email from the local business development agency advising me that an announcement for my book launch was now listed in a municipal events-calendar. I clicked the link to see what it looked like and noticed that, in 38 minutes, there was a scheduled reading for Canadian author David Adams Richards at the public library. I jumped in the shower, jumped in my car, and broke the speed-limit.
David Adams Richards is easily the most famous writer to ever emerge from my native New Brunswick. He’s penned poetry, plays, non-fiction, and – most notably – fiction, including 14 novels, the latest Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul. He’s won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Governor General’s Award, and the esteemed Giller Prize, Canada’s top literary honour. He was supposed to speak in front of a Canadian-literature class I took in high school, but had previous commitments. In university, I read Richards’s first book, The Coming of Winter, but didn’t quite get it. When I lived in Taipei, I found a copy of his Mercy Among the Children and was drawn in deeply, transported back to my quirky and rural home province. Mercy is a good novel (it’s the one that won him the Giller), and I’ve been meaning to explore others, but there are so many books and so little time.
Richards’s stories are often set in the Miramichi, one of New Brunswick’s four main cities. Richards employs stark realism tinged with dark themes. Characters are raw and real and converse in the vernacular. There’s crime, clannishness, ostracism, hypocrisy, prejudice, and poverty. The duplicity of human society features prominently, as does ambiguity; it may be obvious who the victim is, but Richards’s heroes are harder to spot.
At the library, 30 people were seated quietly. Richards was standing off to the side, looking apprehensive or bored. There he was: a Canadian literary giant. Why wasn’t anyone talking to him?
“Excuse me. Do you have a pen?” I asked.
“Ah, no,” he said, patting his pockets, “but there’s one on the table.”
The table was laid out with his books, including his Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul. I grabbed the pen, signed my own book, and presented it to him. I thought he might wince, supply an insincere ‘Thanks,’ and toss it aside the instant I took my leave, but he seemed genuinely interested.
“You wrote this?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re from Saint John?”
“Yes. I read your Mercy Among the Children when I was living in Taiwan, and really enjoyed it.”
“You read it in Chinese?”
“No, in English.”
“Because that one was translated into Chinese. On the mainland, though.”
“Did it sell?”
“I have no idea, but I remember the guy who did it. He was very nice. He wrote me a couple times to ask what things were, you know, to explain words so he could translate them. I remember him asking what a marshmallow was and I had to explain the word ‘Legion.’ I suppose they wouldn’t have Legions in China. Whether it was translated well or not, I don’t know. The English version is that thick (two inches), the German edition that thick (three inches), but the Chinese translation is only about that thick (one inch).” Richards shrugged. “His English wasn’t perfect, but he was really nice.”
It was nearing that time, so I sat down, and the female MC introduced Mr. Richards – at length. But while she was talking, an interesting thing occurred. The author wasn’t really listening. Rather, he was reading my book. At one point, I heard him say to himself, “This is really interesting.” When it was time to take the stand, he took my book and his book to the podium. He set my book down and patted it. He looked at me and said, earnestly, “Thank you for the book.” Then he began to read.
The reading was followed by a Q&A. My questions, the first, were generic: “In fiction, do you know where you’re going? Do you have it planned, or just a rough idea?” I imagine he’s been asked that a thousand times. I should have asked something interesting like, “Is the hypocrisy of human society something you obsess about?” or “How much of wanting to be a writer was motivated by revenge?” Many writers are idealists and feel the need to comment on corruption and perversion. And it’s my theory that, for male writers at least, revenge is a key motivator, especially when starting out.
Writers hope to show every critic, every pretentious academic, every teacher who said, ‘Sorry, you don’t have it,’ that they do have it. Writers catalogue slights and conjure them when they need motivation. Mordecai Richler admitted this. So has Paul Theroux. In The Forest for the Trees, by Betsey Lerner, a book about writing and the business of writing, written by a publishing-industry insider for aspiring writers, the author talks about what motivates authors, and revenge is right up there with need-to-be-heard.
The revenge question was the one I should have posed, but no, I asked the most limp-wristed question imaginable.
In addition to novels, and in true New Brunswick fashion, Richards has penned books on hockey, fishing, and hunting. He recently wrote God Is, about his Catholic faith. Reportedly, this raised the collective eyebrow of the Canadian literary community, with Richards claiming he’s now something of a pariah. I’m not a Christian, so God Is is not a book for me (but neither are books like God is Not Great, though I consider Christopher Hitchens an important essayist and polemicist), but I found Richards’s reasons for writing such a book, and the related advice he gave, interesting.
“Write what you know,” he said. “Write what you want to. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t curb your opinions to fit with someone else’s, which is what a lot of writers do. At some point, someone is going to tell you you’re wrong anyway, so you may as well write what you believe.”
It was the final idea I’d never thought of before: people are going to call you down anyway, so why even begin to compromise? That’s bloody good advice. Who cares about that cacophonous clang from the peanut gallery? Write for yourself.
Writers are often outsiders, but Richards seems an outsider to other writers, a role he acknowledges and appears to revel in (see revenge). He talked about how some time after he’d won the Giller, he was kicked out of a Toronto bookstore because of his appearance, and that he frightened the receptionist at his Toronto publisher because he was dressed like a lumberjack. Along with his art-imitating-life approach to writing, this is part of the reason I like Mr. Richards. He’s an anti-intellectual intellectual.
Richards also discussed the difficulty of getting published: you approach a publisher who tells you need an agent. An agent asks you who your publisher is. He then relayed a couple of anecdotes about his younger days. His debut novel, the one I read in high school, was edited by the publisher’s son, though Richards insisted all the bits the kid “gutted” be stuffed back in!
The Q&A was followed by a signing, and the book I bought was one in the Penguin Books Extraordinary Canadians series. I’d read the series’ Mordecai Richler biography by M.G. Vassanji and had liked it, so I thought I’d check out Richards’s book on Lord Beaverbrook, a.k.a. Max Aitkin (1879-1964), a New Brunswick newspaper baron and the first lord of Fleet Street.
When I was a kid, I played hockey at the Lord Beaverbrook Arena and when I returned to Canada I worked briefly in a building called the Beaverbrook House. I’d been meaning to read about Beaverbrook anyway and knew of Richards’s book, so why not buy a signed copy from the writer himself?
Beaverbrook was a real life Duddy Kravitz. He started his first newspaper at the age of 13, sold bonds door to door, and moved to Montreal to work on the stock exchange. He had a stab at law in Saint John, but then moved to England where he got into politics and built a chain of newspapers. He once owned Rolls Royce. He bought his way into the House of Lords, and was a friend of Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill. Churchill made him a member of the wartime cabinet and put him charge of aircraft (Spitfire) production.
Beaverbrook cut an intriguing figure: a money man riddled with contradictions. He was both decent and deceitful, an uncouth colonial and a calculating aristocrat. Though he loved Britain and her empire, it was an unrequited adoration. But his efforts in Spitfire production made him a hero. Richards’s heroes are not always easy spot.
Despite all his success, Lord Beaverbrook, was – above all – an outsider. Who better than Richards, who grew up less than two blocks from the man, to write about him?
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