And it is. Not only am I revisiting an old manuscript (working title: Up Where We Go), but I am revisiting the person I was 25 years ago. The experience is not unlike looking at an old photo album, or rummaging through a chest of toys you had as a child. The writing is youthful and lyrical and, admittedly, derivative (of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck). And the characters — naive and idealistic compared to the grizzled and world-weary characters I use today — are refreshing, even though I know that life will beat them down, even during the progress of this story.

But I shouldn’t project too far into the book. I haven’t reread it in all these years, and although I have a rough idea of how the plot unfolds, I am constantly being surprised by what happens next. I have no recollection of writing certain scenes; odd, because sometimes I’ll remember precisely the next six or eight words that complete a sentence I haven’t seen in a quarter of a century.

I’ve also noticed that I use “free indirect style” (a species of third person narration in which the narrator possesses some, but not too much, of the attitude of the character over whose shoulder he is looking). I was just reading about this technique several weeks ago in James Wood’s edifying How Fiction Works, and didn’t think I’d ever heard of it before. Well, in fact, I hadn’t. I just used it in ignorance back when I was beginning to write, before I settled down with more conventional forms of narration.

I’ve just completed Chapter 1. I’ve changed a few things here and there, but I haven’t tampered with the spirit of the story. That would be a mistake. So far, I’m having fun. And I’m very excited to see how it ends.

For the novel I’m writing, Black Tupelo, my two main characters, Campbell Young and Priam Harvey, pursue a miscreant named Wendell Honey through the American midwest and southern states. Although my imagination was up to the task of creating the scenes I needed, I wanted — for the sake of authenticity — to see the actual places I had my characters visit. And so it was that in the summer of 2007 I undertook a journey which followed the itinerary my characters followed, a journey that would eventually consume five weeks, take me to 20 states, and cover more than 12,000 kilometres.

FROM CHAPTER 13 OF BLACK TUPELO:

It was noon by the time Leonard picked Harvey up in front of the library. Harvey insisted the cab driver have lunch with him, and they went to Leonard’s favourite restaurant, an unassuming diner just outside the Quarter.
“This is the best sausage I’ve ever eaten,” Harvey said, midway through the meal. “And red beans and rice go really well together.”
“They was made to go together. Benny!” Leonard called out to the waiter. “More beer!”
“More beer?” Harvey said. “Don’t you have to drive this afternoon?”
“I’m takin’ it off, gonna show you ’round my town.”
Several hours later – after standing in line at the Toulouse Street wharf with a bunch of old people carrying deck chairs; after taking a two-hour cruise, featuring a calliope concert, of the lower Mississippi River aboard the steamboat Natchez; after a leisurely drive up St. Charles Avenue through the Garden District to Tulane University; after several cold Coors at the Famous Door on Bourbon Street; and after a visit to Leonard’s favourite tourist attraction, Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum (“It’s goin’ out o’ business,” Leonard told Harvey. “I gots to see it one last time.”) – Leonard dropped Harvey at the Best Western. They shook hands and said goodbye. “Y’all got my number if ya need me,” Leonard said.
“I will. Thanks for everything.”

A follow-up conversation between Campbell Young and Priam Harvey expands the visit to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum:

“What did you see there?”
“Well, let’s see, I saw a wax reproduction of Robert Wadlow, the tallest man who ever lived, and a model of the London Tower Bridge made out of two hundred and sixty-four thousand matchsticks, and the car Lee Harvey Oswald drove the day he shot Kennedy. Oh, and the world’s largest tire. Thirteen thousand pounds.”

There’s a fine line between using such details to make scenes richer and simply showing off. The writer must be careful not to overdo it: within the context of Chapter 13, these details should occupy a very small space.

Next installment: How I keep my tools sharp

But I did, and a couple of  years later, I began my second novel, Men in Groups, which was about teachers and teaching. When it was finished, however, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t like it and never submitted it.

Recently I reread both manuscripts and have decided to see if I can’t resurrect them. As soon as I’ve completed one more revision of my Campbell Young mystery,  Black Tupelo — which should happen within the next week or two — I’m going to start with the teacher novel.

The prospect of retyping these manuscripts (I only have hard copies of them, nothing on disc or floppy or memory stick, let alone hard drive) was daunting, so I was mightily relieved when the proprietor of the local printshop agreed to try to scan them onto disc for me. I gave him the 500 pages of Men in Groups, and a week later he gave me –  for the very reasonable price of $85 — a disc with the novel on it in both Microsoft Word and Word Perfect. There are some glitches (the scanner read “home” as “horne”) but they will just make the process of rewriting the novel more challenging.

Because the novel is set in 1983, one of my first decisions will be whether to keep that setting and, if so, how to make the novel into a period piece. I’ve never written a period piece, but the idea of the research involved appeals to me. I could, I suppose, move the setting to the present day, but I haven’t been in a high school classroom in almost ten years and have no idea what teaching is like today. However, I do know what it was like back in the good old days, when I could not only choose what literature I wanted to teach (The Sun Also Rises, The Sound and the Fury, the poetry of Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath, for example) but the students actually read it.

Next installment: Finishing Black Tupelo

As well as being a writer of consummate style, Updike was prolific. Compelled to write, he tried to produce at least one book a year. In the end, he wrote almost 30 novels, more than a dozen books of short stories, nine collections of poetry, as well as books of essays and criticism and autobiography. During 2008 alone, he published two short stories, a memoir, and three book reviews in The New Yorker Magazine. Especially poignant are his musings on getting old  in “A Desert Encounter” (20/10/08); and in his powerful short story “Outage” (07/01/08) he flexes his muscles one last time on the subject of sexual tension in suburbia. His last short story (26/06/08) was — ironically and wonderfully — called ‘The Full Glass.’ He was a writer to the end.

What Updike gave me (aside from lessons in the craft of writing: he was a master and mentor, a guide and father-figure) was this: his subject matter, as sordid as it sometimes was — the bedroom society of Couples (1968), for example — was about ordinary human behaviour; he always dealt with it candidly and non-judgmentally. He was a chronicler of our time. When I learned of his death, I felt a personal loss, as if a close friend or relative had died. And that is exactly what did happen. Although he never knew me, I knew him (or at least I believed I did, and still do) through his writing, and I loved him for his candour — for showing me that he saw the world much the way I did, and for reassuring me that despite our weaknesses as human beings, we are all still capable — as he and his characters were — of noble deeds.

See Jeet Heer’s piece in The National Post (28/01/09) and M. T. Kelly’s piece in The Globe & Mail (29/01/09) by clicking here and here.

Next Installment: My next project: Men in Groups.

“What Mestern does best is paint evocative pictures of the lovely rural area in the rolling hills between Fergus and Collingwood, and Shelburne to the east.

The book is worth reading for this alone, especially if you are familiar with the area.”

Alberta History on David Elliott’s Adventures in the West: Henry Halpin, Fur Trader and Indian Agent:

“Books like this, dealing with the personal side of the fur trade and Indian Affairs do not come by very often. This one is certainly worth having.”

Joseph Howse of The Chronicle Herald on one of our more recent Voyageur Classic titles, Benjamin Drew’s The Refugee:

“Through its abundance of firsthand testimony, The Refugee provides a long and heart-wrenching glimpse into a chapter of both U.S. and Canadian history.

The eloquent narratives reveal the courage and ingenuity of men and women who first succeeded in escaping the physical and mental torments of slavery, and then built livelihoods from scratch in a different frontier land…

Regardless of the choice of edition, The Refugee is an emotionally powerful and factually detailed nonfiction classic — essential reading for anyone who wants to hear and understand the voices of slavery survivors, and early black settlers in Canada.”

Whether you’re drinking your java or putting on your woolies in preparation for work, make sure you tune into CBC’s Metro Morning (GTA) and Ontario Morning (Ontario outside the GTA) for Deborah Brennan’s interview with Karen Horseman on Tuesday, Nov. 25 th at 7:20 am.

 

Labours of Love: Canadians Talk About Adoption
Deborah A. Brennan
9781550028454
$28.99 / £16.99 (paper)
Publication date: November 8, 2008