By Elizabeth Howell
Photos by Chris Roussakis
When Giller Prizewinner Andre Alexis began his quintet of five novels, his inspiration did not arise from his immigration to Canada, the racism he encountered or subsequent life experiences, he says. Rather, it came from the craft of storytelling itself.
Alexis delivered his comments as part of Carleton University’s , a series launched in 1985 to honour the English department’s founding chair and his contributions to literary studies in Canada. The aim is to allow writers and critics to speak on issues relevant to both the general public and the academic world.
The full-capacity crowd at Azrieli Theatre on Jan. 26 listened intently as Alexis read excerpts from four of his novels, including the prize-winning Fifteen Dogs, which examines if dogs would become happier were they to receive human intelligence. Alexis said it is easy for him to cry while reading the book because it reminds him of a dog he had that died.
But he said he would try not to cry in front of the audience: “It’s like laughing at your own jokes in reverse.”
Alexis was exposed to elements of Greek mythology as well as Trinidadian mythology as a child in Trinidad. He immigrated to Canada at an early age and subsequently attended Carleton, where he studied English literature and Russian. His first novel was published in 1997.
Alexis was already an established writer when he tried to reimagine a work by 20th century Italian writer Pier Paolo Pasolini, called Teorema. The plot follows a god that visits a well-off family on Earth and brings “madness, despair, grace and the miraculous,” according to a Quill & Quire essay that Alexis wrote in 2015.
“It’s a truly great story and I wanted to re-tell it, to own it as one does with some stories. I couldn’t, though. I ended up writing inept versions of Pasolini,”
From that failure, however, Alexis got an idea. If he reduced Teorema down to its basic themes, he could tell it in five ways: as a pastoral (set in an idealized rural world), an apologue (a moral tale with animals), a quest narrative, a ghost story and a Harlequin romance.
This formed the inspiration for his quintet of five novels, which so far includes Pastoral (2014), Fifteen Dogs (2015) and The Hidden Keys (2016). He read aloud from the fourth novel of the quintet, then joked with the crowd that he couldn’t wait to finish. “Soon, the fifth one will be done and I’ll be so happy. I’m a little tired of doing this stuff,” he said to laughter.
Still, he said (reading from Quill & Quire) that writing the quintet helped him better understand narrative and the elements of storytelling. “The reward for the reader – I hope – is the pleasure that comes in hearing a story. If, with the novels in my quincunx, I’ve done my work well, the reader, any reader, will feel what one does after hearing a proper story: joy and the longing for another one.”
During a brief question and answer period at lecture’s’ end, Alexis urged students aspiring to be authors to just write as much as possible, but only if they feel the urge to do so. “If you don’t need to, don’t do it, because it’s a stupid life,” he added.
Alexis is also known for Childhood (1997), which won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and co-won the Trillium Prize, as well as Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa (1994), which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize (Canada and Caribbean region). He lives in Toronto and has contributed to CBC and This Magazine.
Friday, January 27, 2017 in Feature Stories
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