As yesterday’s informal National Post poll showed, Joseph Boyden is the smart-money choice to win this year’s Giller Prize tonight. (Update: Huzzah! I was right.) And for good reason — his new novel, Through Black Spruce, is a methodical study of our relation to the land and each other, marked by Boyden’s characteristically beautiful prose and true, vivid characters. I spoke with Joseph a few weeks ago in Toronto.

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I read in the interview you did with your wife, Amanda, for the CBC, that you handed her a hundred pages of an early version of the novel that just wasn’t working. How did this story originally come to you? And what did you change from those early attempts to make it successful?

The story originally—I knew before I finished Three Day Road that I wanted to write at least one other book, and very possibly two, try and create a trilogy of the family. Each novel could be read on its own, but they don’t have to be read in any particular order, although reading them from first to third might make the most sense. I wanted to stretch myself as a writer and go back to the contemporary—my first story collection was contemporary short stories—and I wanted to explore that world again because I think there’s so much going on, it’s really kind of exciting. And then this whole idea, kind of from a Leonard Cohen song, “Suzanne takes you down” was fascinating to me, and the original title was She Takes You Down, referring to Suzanne, traveling down South and that. But the original title had too many negative connotations that I didn’t want to imply.

It’s a strong title now…

Yeah, I like this title. I hope other people do too. This idea of light and dark filtering through…

And the spruce are such a motif throughout…

Yeah, absolutely. And I didn’t even plan that, it’s kind of funny. My editor, Nicole, pointed that out. She said, ‘You know, there’s lots of black spruce in this…’ And I said, ‘Well there’s lots of it up there…’ It’s not like it’s filled with palm trees.

I wanted to try and explore identity again, without forcing it or making it too big of a theme. I wanted the story to be first, and the characters to really take the lead. And the idea of the fashion world, and the world of the high life in New York City, Montreal, Toronto. I thought, ‘What if one of my characters got thrown into that world.’ And so I wrote a short story, actually, called “Through Black Spruce,” as a testing ground, years ago, and Toronto Life picked it up last time they published the summer fiction issue. And so that made me excited, that people might be interested in that. And so I pushed that idea of the city, but I also wanted to keep in mind the idea of the forest. I actually wrote a whole draft of Through Black Spruce and gave it to Amanda and she said that it just wasn’t working, that it was too slow, that there was no real focus to the arc. She was right, and I knew it in my gut, but I needed to hear it from her. I went back and I did what I did with Three Day Road. I wrote Three Day Road chronologically originally before I realized that I had to wrap it back on itself. I’d been applying a Western kind of storytelling to what’s inherently, I hope, a First Nations tale. So just like in Three Day Road, I wrapped Through Black Spruce and began it almost at the end, looking at these two characters end up in these places where they are right now, and this place together where they are right now, and how they ended up there.

So what does the structure of having two narrators do for you as an author?
Well, with the alternating chapters, it’s a chance for each of them to begin weaving a story and see how those stories are going to come together at times. There’s certainly an arc, I hope, with the new novel, that happens with the restructuring of the story this way. You know, I’ve never set out to write a mystery novel, before, but in a way it is. But that’s not the overall thing—I didn’t set out to write a whodunit. But there’s an inherent tension in that, trying to figure out how these two people got where they are, both for themselves, and for the reader.

How do you compose with two narrators? Write one in full, then the other? How do you set about pacing between the two?

It’s a good question. No, I didn’t, and the same thing happened with Three Day Road. Each character kind of had their piece to say, and then it was time for the next character. It was almost like starting a short story every time I started a chapter. I had to keep in mind arcs, and a lot of different things, but I’m not a big plotter out of story before hand.

You’d think this sort of structure would make you have to plot it all out…

I should have, in a way. I knew that Annie, for example, in chapter three or five, or whatever, I knew she’d have to get to a certain point by chapter seven, and I wanted Will to as well, and often times while writing them each one at a time, chapter to chapter, I knew in the back of my mind where one had just been and where he or she was, so the other character could always have little touch points.

I think for me, there’s such an honesty in each of their voices, that when you switch back and forth and by the end of each chapter, you’re kind of yearning to hear from the other person.

Yeah, and as a writer, I don’t want to bore the reader. One of my jobs is not to bore the reader, so my writing told me that when I started losing focus, or I hit a place that was just a nice place to leave a chapter, I knew it was time. Okay, let’s just leave the chapter there, go to the next one, and start to build up tension there. So the idea, hopefully, is a kind of incremental building of tension, between chapters and characters.

In a way, it’s not just that there are two narrators, but two narrators who are actively telling a story within the story. Obviously the storytelling tradition has cultural resonance for you, but what does the device do for you as a novelist—does it limit you? Set you free, in a way?

With this family, they’re kind of loners, all of them, all of the Birds so far—Niska is a loner, Xavier’s a loner, Annie and Will are kind of loners—so eventually they’re going to talk, and if they’re going to talk to someone, it’s probably going to be family, someone they’re going to be trust. And one of my important jobs as a writer is to tell a good story, and if I fail in that I’ve got to start over and try again. I think a lot of writers would agree with me—characters are important, voice is huge, but it’s got to be pulled on a string, have that tension to it.

I was thinking of when Annie, talking about speaking to Will, notes: “I’ve been telling him stories about what’s happened to me the last year. It’s kind of weird. I almost feel like I’m at confession.” In a sense, Will’s confessing too. Are all stories, in some way, a confession?

I don’t know if all are, but I think a lot are. I think this idea that as writers we want to shine a light on something we find important or fascinating, so our natural inclination is going to be to try to share that in any way we can. The idea of the confessional, for this novel in particular, made a lot of sense to me, because they’ve both been in bad places and done some bad things and have been treated poorly, and it’s their need, their desire, to express that to each other. There’s a healing in that.

When Will is on the island, building his shelter, he notes that he “slowly became wild like a rabbit or bear, living in the ground, emerging each morning to hunt.” Annie herself is drawn to the bush with a similar impulse. It seems to me that the problems facing the community come not just from the outside—the encroachment of shopping carts, etc.—but from within, too. Is this disconnection from the land inevitable? Can it be restored?

On reserves, that I’ve seen? Oh absolutely, I think there’s a disconnection between a lot of people and the land. Little story: I was teaching up in Fort Albany, and I met this wonderful couple who had two young boys, and they lived surrounded by hundreds of miles of bush and rivers and lakes and I took the boys out fishing one day and caught a pike, and they’d never caught a fish before. And I was just shocked.

And there’s the moment when Annie points out that Gordon is the only Indian in Canada who’s never caught a fish…

…yeah, exactly. And I think not all people, not with everyone, by any means—I know so many people who make their living off the land—but there are also so many people who don’t even go out in the bush.

Do you think it’s connected to these outside influences, drugs, and things…

You know, I paint Moosoneee as my fictional Moosonee—I don’t think it’s nearly as drug infested and violent as it comes off across in my novel. But there’s all kinds of reasons that people don’t go out in the bush. Part of it is that it’s not cheap to do, it’s expensive to get a freighter canoe, and a motor, and gas, or a four-wheeler. You can say, ‘Why don’t they just head out with a backpack,’ but these people live in the Muskeg, they’re not going to get very far if they don’t travel the rivers. But there’s all kinds of reasons, part of it is parents—you know, I think you can trace a lot of it back to residential schools. Kids spent ten months of the year in these institutions, and the nuns and the priests certainly weren’t taking them out into the bush. Their parents weren’t able to, because they weren’t allowed to. I think there was a breakdown in a lot of ways, and that was part of it. There’s a lot of people who don’t know much about it, but then again, there are a lot who do—a lot of Cree I know are tied to the land and that’s the most physically way they can express themselves, show themselves, and their identity.

A few weeks ago you told CBC that the north is “why [you] write. Just the idea of the beauty and the calmness and the stillness is such a change from the busy busy hectic life that you lead down south” In a way, the book is a meditation on the north. How—if at all— is your experience of that place different from Will’s or Annie’s.

I don’t think I’d be nearly as good in the bush as these guys…

So a little bit of projection…

Oh yeah, sure, absolutely. They both use the north as their livelihood. She’d begun to be a guide as she went off to look for her sister. Will was a guide, and a hunter and trapper, and so they used the north almost as their grocery store in a way that I try to when I’m there, but I always bring other things. They’re more of the land than I could be. I can’t imagine Will living part of his life in New Orleans. Or Annie, for that matter. For then, it’s all inclusive, whereas for me, it’s my escape.

Do you see similarities between New Orleans and the north?

The reserves? Yeah, sure. Moosonee’s probably seventy percent Aboriginal. New Orleans, before Katrina anyways, was about seventy percentAfrican-American. Both populations have faced a lot of issues with the bigger culture—slavery, residential schools, etc. etc. There’s a lot of poverty in the communities, which leads to a lot addiction. Again, we’re always painting a very dark picture of First Nations communities, but there’s a lot of positive too, and a lot of positive things in common: people who love to laugh, who are artistic, who are giving, who open themselves up to outsiders, who outsiders always view with concern and fear.

Will notes that the girls’ grandfather was a hero in the war. And then he insists that “there are no heroes in this world. Not really. Just men and women who become old and tired and lose the strength to fight for what they love any longer.” What’s changed since their grandfather’s time? What is it in Will’s world that makes heroism impossible?

Well at the same point that I don’t want to always paint the bleak aspects of First Nations life, from my view, I also don’t want to overly romanticize it. So that section’s from when Xavier had to turn Will into residential school because he was forced to, and that was the reality of the situation, that’s what people had to do. And that will crush a person. That will break a person. And so I think what’s changed from Xavier’s world to Will’s world in my novel is people less and less needing the land, and more and more getting caught up in the contemporary trappings of internet and television and shopping stores and buying, the whole consumer market. And that continues to change, even on reserves, this consumer dependency.

So is it that there really isn’t room for heroes? Or that that moment is a product of that recollection?

I think Will is a hero in a way. I don’t want to give away the ending, but I think he does something quite heroic. Will would never call himself a hero, just like his father Xavier wouldn’t call himself a hero. And so Will does some heroic things. He’s a very complicated and imperfect man, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do heroic actions to save others.

I’m sure that everyone says this, but the arc with Will and the bear destroyed me. How did that arrive? Were you just like, ‘Oh man, I’ve got this great idea: there’s gonna be this bear.’

This bear kind of showed up on the scene, and I didn’t know where it was going, and then I thought, ‘Wouldn’t be interesting if this guy befriends an animal that he’s hunted, and that people look at as dangerous.’ When you’re working with a bear as a motif, it’s a pretty strong symbol, and I didn’t feel like I had to push it too hard. He just befriends this bear, and I hope it’s humorous too.

Yeah, it is. He eats a rancid ham off the lawn—that’s funny. You mentioned that you see this as part of a trilogy. Is that what’s next—book three?

Yeah, I’m going to work on that. And I’ve never done this before, but I’m going to work on two novels at the same time. I’ve got another novel, a big kind of novel, historical and juicy, I hope. I’m going to work on both and see which one takes over. See if the Bird clan needs a little break for a while.

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Posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 12:32 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.