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Terry Fallis: Paris in the 20s
150 Plays1 year ago
Joe and Mark are joined by beloved and bestselling Canadian author, Terry Fallis.
Terry's fiction has won the Leacock Medal for Humour twice, and his debut novel, Best Laid Plans, won Canada Reads in 2011. The annual CBC competition had a huge impact on his sales figures for that novel: more than 150,000 copies of the book to date. "Canada Reads made me a bestseller," he says, adding how grateful he is to the contest.
A replica of an old map of Paris, circa. 1928, decorates Terry's office walls. It, along with his old Underwood typewriter, remind him of a remarkable time in the history of writing – Paris in the 1920s.
"Paris and that particular period in history was such a critical time in the history of literature," says Terry.
The three have a lively and entertaining conversation about this period of literary history, the nature of writing, and a few bits of Canadian trivia as well.
Tune in and join in the fun.
For more info on this show, visit the show notes for this episode.
Re-Creative is a co-production of Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with MonkeyJoy Press.
Contact us: joemahoney@donovanstreetpress.com
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Transcript
Introductions and Weather Chat
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, Mark. Hello, Joe. How are things? How's the weather? Let's be Canadian. You know, I'm in, I'm in the Maritimes. I was in Prince Edward Island most of today back in New Brunswick now, but it was a beautiful day in PEI. It was nice here in Ontario too. I don't believe that for a second. It was. No, it was gorgeous.
School Politics: Joe and Mark's Experiences
00:00:28
Speaker
Yeah. So I have a question that's not about the weather, but it is sort of a Canadian question too. And hopefully our guests will have an answer for as well. So have you ever,
00:00:39
Speaker
run for any kind of office or run someone's campaign for office. Could be any kind of office too, doesn't have to be. You know what? I tried to help somebody become president of the school council in high school. And I think that is the closest I've ever come to politics. I've never run for anything myself and nor do I care to.
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah. And that campaign didn't go well in high school. Oh, no. No. He lost. He may have got two votes for it. Oh, no. I'm sure he would have gotten none if you hadn't helped. Sure. Yeah. We'll give you the credit for that. How about you? Yeah, I have. I actually, when I went to university, I went to Queens and my first year I ran for student council president and won that.
00:01:30
Speaker
And then a couple of years later, the Rhino Party asked me to run in the federal election. Are you serious? I was so close to doing it too, because I would have got to debate Flora McDonald. And the platform really appealed to me. That was the year that the party wanted to be self-sufficient in bananas. That was our main plank of our platform.
00:01:50
Speaker
I was like, oh, but then I realized if I did that, I was not going to graduate because I wouldn't have been able to keep going to school. So Mark, you need to go back in time and do that. No, I don't have many regrets in life, but that actually is one. But I thought this might be a question that our guest, Terry Fallis, might have an answer to as well. I expect so. Yeah.
Terry Fallis: From Student President to Author
00:02:11
Speaker
Well, guys, I did run. I was heavily involved with student politics when I was at McMaster. And like you, Mark, and
00:02:20
Speaker
In my final year, after I actually had my mechanical engineering degree, I ran for president of the Students' Union and somehow got myself elected. So that was a full-time job for the next year, which was life-changing in many ways for me. But yeah, so I have run a campaign, my own, you know, traipsed through residences and classrooms and
00:02:49
Speaker
on how to stump speech. And it was a great experience all in all. And that's a big job running the student unit for like, it was for the main student unit for the whole university. Yeah, it was. It was a big job. And like full time job, I was constitutionally precluded from taking any courses, you know, but it's a full time job. Yeah, he had 23 full time employees, about 400 part time employees and
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah, it was a, you know, budget was a couple of million bucks, I guess at the time. That's a cool experience though. See, mine was much more restricted. It was just the year I was the president of the year and I got to sit on the sort of general counsel and I'm like, I don't want to do any more of this. That was an, I want to write silly plays.
00:03:36
Speaker
Exactly. So you know what, this is a good time to segue into actually the question that we always ask too late in the podcast, which is about yourself. I don't know if you've heard, but what we do in this podcast is we ask the guests to introduce themselves so you can put yourself in the most favorable light possible, embellishing here and there, and nobody will know. To the point of complete fantasy, if you want. Sure. Although there is a Wikipedia page about you, which it could. That's true.
00:04:04
Speaker
That's true. And we know Wikipedia is always right. We can retcon the Wikipedia if we need to. That's right. Well, I'm Terry Fallis. I was born and raised in Toronto. So I'm one of the few people who was actually born and have lived most of my life here. A few short years at McMaster in Hamilton and a year or so in Ottawa working in politics. But yeah, I have a
00:04:33
Speaker
degree in mechanical and biomedical engineering. I've never been an engineer in the truest professional sense, but my engineering background or predilections or inclinations, I think shape almost everything that I do, including writing my novels. But I had a early career in politics on Parliament Hill and at Queen's Park, the provincial capital here in Ontario.
00:04:59
Speaker
Then I spent 35 years in a communications public affairs consulting world. We created our own agency in 1995 that continues even today with my name on the door with somebody else's to a double-barreled name. And though I retired last March or two marches ago now, I finally realized my dream of being a full-time writer.
00:05:25
Speaker
Not because I earn enough on my novels to be a full-time writer, but because I spent 15 years since my first novel, ardently saving so that I could afford to retire and just write. Plus, I married well above my station.
00:05:42
Speaker
That always helps. Things that I aspire to, all of these are things that I'm going to take your playbook. Wow. And just to flesh out your bio a little bit, you've won the Stephen Leacock Award twice. Yes, miraculously, yes. Or I'm sure well deserved. And also Canada Reads. I won Canada Reads once, or at least my novel won it. The best laid plans won in 2011.
00:06:08
Speaker
It was the 10th anniversary year, so they made a big deal out of things then, and they were going to call the winner of Canada Reads that year, regardless of what book won, the essential Canadian novel of the decade. And that phrase has somehow become attached to my novel because it won Canada Reads, which is such a ridiculous notion, as you guys would completely understand, both of you being
00:06:33
Speaker
talented writers as well. So anyway, that's always cracks me up because it gets into my introductions. Author of All the Best Way Plans, the essential Canadian novel of the decade. But you know what? Like I read Rick Mercer's memoir and he mentions several times, Smoke and Mirrors. It's all about smoke and mirrors. So that's a little bit of smoke and mirrors that can only help. It occurs to me we should explain what Canada Reads is.
00:07:04
Speaker
for listeners who aren't from Canada, because we have listeners from everywhere. Who wants to try to tackle that?
Impact of Awards on Book Sales
00:07:10
Speaker
And my next question is, who defended your book, Terry? Well, the guy who defended my book, my champion was CNN business correspondent, chief business correspondent at the time, Ali Velshi, who is now on NBC, I think, or MSNBC.
00:07:29
Speaker
But Canada Reads is just this annual, it's kind of like it's survivor in the book world. Five books are nominated for Canada Reads. They each have a celebrity defender or as big a celebrity defender as we might have in Canada. And on live radio and streaming television, they debate the books and they vote one book off each episode.
00:07:55
Speaker
And then finally, the last book standing is the winner of Canada Reads, which, you know, sounds like lots of fun and frivolity, which it is. But it's also extraordinarily important for the writer who happens to win, because Canada Reads is a big deal in Canada. It sells more books in this country than anything else, except for the Giller Prize. I was going to say, isn't the Giller Prize kind of like the big? Yeah, the Giller is, that's why I say it that way, that I tack on except at the end.
00:08:25
Speaker
My novel at the time had sold about 10,000 copies. And now because of the Canada Reads effect,
00:08:32
Speaker
and the little badge, Canada reads winner on the cover. Not so much what's between the covers, but just that badge. It sold about 150,000 copies now. Wow, congratulations. That's amazing. You know, if you're in Britain, that may not sound like big numbers, but in Canada, those are pretty strong numbers. So it is a great blessing. So I sort of think of the Leacock Medal, because that's the first thing that happened to me in my writing life.
00:08:59
Speaker
on my first novel, I feel like that made me a writer. Canada Reads made me a bestseller and that the after effects are still there. So there is no more grateful a writer in this land than I. So what just stresses me about that is that a few moments ago, you said that you weren't earning enough from the sales of your book to be able to be a full-time writer. And yet you're seeing numbers like that.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's, you know, there was a big bulge in one of those years. And then there was another, maybe a nice little kick when, you know, The Best Late Plans, my first novel was turned into a six-part television miniseries. That pays a lot better than selling the book. But other than that, there aren't many Canadian writers who can
00:09:51
Speaker
who can make it just on their book sales. Obviously Margaret Atwood would be counted among those lucky few. Lawrence Hill probably does pretty well. The Book of Negroes sold 500 or 600
Challenges in the Canadian Book Market
00:10:04
Speaker
,000 copies, so. My neighbor might be making, Emma Donahue was my neighborhood. Yeah, Emma, she does pretty well. But she would do well in her international sales as well. And also movies and stuff.
00:10:18
Speaker
I'm sort of a strictly Canadian writer. I have one foreign deal, I think. My fork novel was translated and published in Taiwan, of all places. Oh, that's great. I've never seen anything from it, so maybe it wasn't that great.
00:10:36
Speaker
I rely on the Canadian market alone and we're a pretty small country for a very big country. Well, I'm delighted to be able to tell you that appearing on this podcast will increase your sales by two or three. By up to two or three. Why do you think I leapt at this opportunity? I was wondering. I just want to go back to Canada Reads very quickly to give some credit where credit is due because you had asked about it, Mark.
00:11:03
Speaker
And some of these people behind the scenes, they don't get their name out there. Just to mention that it was created by Peter Kavanagh, who was a very well-regarded books producer with CBC Radio. Well, he had the general idea, apparently, and then Talene Vartanian ran with it, and she ran with it for several years. And then ultimately, I think it was taken over by Ann Jensen. Yes, that's right. And I know there was many other people involved, too, but those are the three names that come immediately to mind just to give them a little shout out.
00:11:32
Speaker
You're right, and I don't know the first two you mentioned, but Ann Jansen and I go back quite a ways, and she's now running the audiobook division at Penguin Random House. So I still work with her to this day when I record my audiobooks. Yeah, and she may have just retired or be about to. Oh, you might be right.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah. Welcome to the club. You're in the club. She's in the club. I recently joined that club three months ago. We need to get Mark there. I hate you. Congratulations. I'm very proud of all of you. I'm very happy for all of you. I aspire to be all of you at some point.
00:12:13
Speaker
You know, there's nothing like it. I haven't given the day job that I had and loved for 30 some odd years. I have not given it a thought since I hung it up because I'm doing now what I've wanted to do for a very long time, which is just think about writing all the time and writing.
00:12:34
Speaker
Yeah. And I want to, I'm going to ask you about that right now. And cause I know you have a piece of art that you're going to propose as we do on this podcast. And we'll get to that in the last two or three minutes of the show, but that's not the format. So yeah. So you, so you retired and you're writing how quickly and easily were you able to transition into the full time writing and how, how did that go?
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah, it took about 20 minutes, I'd say.
00:13:06
Speaker
It didn't take long, uh, at all. Uh, and really it was in the pandemic at the time. And so I had a bit of a transition in
Transition to Full-Time Writing
00:13:16
Speaker
that when the pandemic hit, we all started working from home. So I was sitting at this very desk where I am right now, surrounded by books on all sides and things that make me, uh, feel more like a writer. So I got to spend my entire day in here, even though what the work I was doing was, was not my own.
00:13:36
Speaker
creative writing. That happened, you know, in the evenings and weekends and stuff. So I already had the place, the location, the feeling of being in this place for extended periods of time. That had already taken root. And plus, when you give notice to your partner, your co-founder in this firm, and he was happy for me, but we had probably two months where I was still working. I wasn't writing yet.
00:14:04
Speaker
And in those two months, all your mind is doing is thinking about what's it going to be like when that final day comes. So you have lots of time to anticipate it. And it honestly didn't take long because my heart had been
00:14:20
Speaker
a full-time writer since my first novel came out in 2008. It just took 15 years before I could bring my head and the rest of my body along with it. Wow. Yeah, because I'm having a little more difficulty because I honestly thought that the day after, I would spend that day and then get those words down.
00:14:42
Speaker
But I there's so many distractions and not frivolous distractions, like things that need to get done. Yes. And all of a sudden you have time to do them. And what's more, you have no excuse for not doing them. Yeah. And also I'm a people pleaser. So when people go, would you mind? And I'm like, well, but I'm OK. Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, that's the heart. I think I'm the same way, too. It's hard. Yeah. You got to care about the time.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. But it is nice. Do you have a place to write, Joe, where you are right now? Is that where you write? That's an interesting question. Yes. And I do try to write here where I am. This is my little office. But because like you, all of my writing has taken place to date in the nooks and crannies of my life. Right. I've kind of trained myself to be able to write anywhere, anytime.
00:15:37
Speaker
And so that's why I moved to laptops so I could just take them anywhere. And if I'm waiting for someone outside of an appointment or something like that, I'll write there. It doesn't matter. Right. Well, that might be one of the issues is you're used to
00:15:53
Speaker
being able to move quickly on a dime. Oh, I've got an hour here. I'm going to do this. And now when you're unencumbered by such limitations, you have to write in this little space or this little time over here. Yeah. It's sometimes harder when the whole day spreads out in front of you to get yourself going. I get that. I think you're exactly right. Yeah.
00:16:15
Speaker
But I'll get there. Do you have a technique for that, Terry? Stephen Kang, for example, he writes whatever it is, four hours first thing in the morning, he gets help us have his coffee and he starts writing and he's done after four hours because that's really not going to be any good after that, he says, and that seems to work for him. Do you have a similar kind of? Well, I guess it's worked okay for him. Yeah, he seems to be struggling along and making managing it, you know, yeah.
Writing Environment and Routine
00:16:42
Speaker
Well, I have a when we renovated our house back in 2008, we built this library on the third floor at the back of our house. And there's a little balcony that overlooks our backyard. I look out and all I see is trees. And I usually don't have any trouble getting myself up here in the morning. And I shut the door and that when I shut the door, it's kind of like
00:17:06
Speaker
I'm now in this separate little capsule that I'm untouchable, which is obviously not true, but that's what it feels like. And sometimes I don't get going right away, but I'm sitting here and I'm in the space where I write. I'm in a place that if you came in here, you would think, oh, there's probably a writer who works here just because I like to surround myself with things that make me feel like a writer for those days when I don't actually feel like a writer. It helps.
00:17:35
Speaker
And so it's a really nice place to be. I have a couple of guitars sitting over here that
00:17:40
Speaker
I can try writing of a different kind if I need to. Now, because this is an audio podcast and so people aren't seeing what we're seeing, I'll just describe it. Look, it almost looks like a virtual background behind you. Like it could be, you know, except that, you know, the aliasing and whatnot that you usually see. But yeah, there's a bookshelf full of books and there's a picture of a typewriter to the right of your head. Is it an Underwood? Looks like it to me.
00:18:10
Speaker
I think it is an Underwood, and I have a real Underwood typewriter from the 20s over on my shelf over here. Cool. I've always wanted one of those. And then, beside the picture of the typewriter, there is a map. The ultimate question. It's a segway. I was going to do that if Joe wasn't clicking.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah. So that is what we were supposed to talk about today. The map. Yeah. Can you tell us about the map then? Yeah, it isn't actually a map from 1928. It is a reproduction of the actual map, a straight map of Paris from 1928 that I found somewhere online
00:18:53
Speaker
And it's, you know, it's even got the aged fold marks in it, even though it's a reproduction. And I had it framed, which cost 10 times as much as the map itself cost. It's inspiring to me because Paris, that particular city, and the 1920s, that particular period in history, it was such a pivotal time in literature, really.
00:19:20
Speaker
Well, frankly, in the post-war period after the 1918 end of the war, the First Great War, the winds of change really swept through Europe, and Europe was ripe for reform and revolution, and all of these artists of all descriptions gathered in Paris in the 1920s, painters, poets,
Hemingway's Influence and Personal Life
00:19:43
Speaker
dancers, musicians, composers, writers,
00:19:47
Speaker
And really, they reshaped the cultural landscape in almost all of those fields. But chief among them, I think, was literature. And a whole bunch of expat writers moved to Paris following all the rest of the artists because Paris was a really inexpensive city in which to live at the time. So much cheaper than almost anywhere else in the world, which is why Paris became the epicenter for this cultural revolution of sorts.
00:20:17
Speaker
And when I wrote my first novel and I actually began to feel like I might be a writer, those periods in literary history loomed larger for me. And I started reading about the writers in Paris in the 1920s, Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound and Ford, Maddox Ford and Gertrude Stein and a guy named Morley Callahan, a great Canadian writer.
00:20:43
Speaker
and their contributions. And I just sort of fell in love with the city and with the period. And it doesn't take a lot of inspiration beyond looking at that map to keep me going. Plus, I've got about
00:20:58
Speaker
300 books here all on that period and I don't even like Hemingway I probably know most about I've read more books about Hemingway than anyone else in that period and I can't stand Hemingway's writing and I think he was
00:21:14
Speaker
Can we swear on this podcast? Yeah, you can do it every one. Yep. Go ahead. A prime asshole of the first order for almost an entire life. Now, you know, I should, to be fair, he was also mentally ill, probably mentally ill for the last 20 years of his life, though it was not really obvious to those who might know about such things until the last, you know, five years of his life.
00:21:40
Speaker
So maybe he had an excuse or at least an explanation for his behavior, but you can't question the seismic impact he had on writing at the time, taking what was previously been these really ornamented, labyrinthine, flowy sentences and stripping it right down to the barest of essentials.
00:22:04
Speaker
And using a vocabulary, there's probably no more than about 100 words. I mean, anybody of any education level could read a Hemingway story and be just as wrapped up in it, because that's how he wrote. And I, on the other hand, I hail from the YU six words when 12 will do the school of writing. I love the language. It's a bountiful, rich language, and I like to explore its outer reaches.
00:22:33
Speaker
I'm all in for a long multi-closhed ornamented sentence if it flows nicely. So there's no reason for me to like Hemingway beyond just the clear impact he had at a time when he just arrived at the right time in the right city with the right approach to literature to foment this change, to catalyze this shift in literature with which we are still living in a way 100 years later.
00:23:02
Speaker
So that's probably more than you wanted to know about the map of Paris from 1928. If I could follow up on Hemingway for a second, how much do you think his background as a journalist, because he was a journalist for the Toronto Star, right? So how much do you think that had an impact on the quality of his writing or the approach he had to his prose? I think it was tremendously influential, Mark.
00:23:25
Speaker
His first job as a journalist was at the Kansas City Star. And they handed him this little card that had on it the rules of journalism at the Kansas City Star. And they are essentially the rules that defined his writing, whether he was writing journalism, which he continued to do in Paris as a foreign correspondent at least for a time.
00:23:49
Speaker
but also in his fiction. So he applied the same rules. And that may be why it was such a big shift, because no one was writing fiction short or long in that style at the time. Or if they were, they weren't doing it as well as he was doing it, because pretty well it's heaped at his feet that he had created this kind of writing, rightly or wrongly.
00:24:16
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it was very, very influential. Had he not been a journalist, you wonder. So he found his voice, I think, before he started writing fiction. He found his voice when he was a court reporter at the Kansas City Star. And the mental illness you refer to, I mean, he committed suicide, so probably he was depressed. Was there anything else? Well, there are a few factors. There's a family history in the Hemingway clan of mental illness. His father committed suicide.
00:24:45
Speaker
his granddaughter committed suicide. I think there are seven members of his immediate family and generations that came after who committed suicide. So depression, he called it the black ass. He did have sort of clinical depression, but well, nobody called it clinical depression then. But the other factor was he had over the course of his life, six or seven
00:25:13
Speaker
serious concussions, serious head injuries. And the last one, probably the most serious, when he and his wife, Mary, at the time, his fourth wife, were in two plane crashes in the space of two days in Africa.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, they were flying in small planes. They weren't, you know, the first one wasn't a major one. It was a bad line. It flipped over, but everyone was fine. And then they had to get another plane to fly them out. And that plane crashed more seriously and it caught on fire. And he literally used his head as a battering ram to get the door that was jammed shut open.
00:25:57
Speaker
Or he would have perished. But serious, serious concussions over the course of his life that many are now in hindsight, in clinical hindsight, are suggesting, affected his mental health in a serious way towards the end. He was very much paranoid at the end of his life. And it was a sad state of affairs. And he couldn't write anymore. And of course, that just crushed him.
00:26:28
Speaker
But yeah, so a fascinating life. But I'm most drawn to his time in Paris, his formative years as a writer, when he was hanging out with Pablo Picasso and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Morley Callahan and having an affair with Pauline Pfeiffer behind his wife Hadley's back and the famous incident of when Hadley lost all of his manuscripts on the train,
00:26:58
Speaker
seriously affected their relationship for some time, may have catalyzed his straying, roving eye. I mean, he just was not a nice person. Would he have gone to Gertrude Stein's salon as well? Yes. He spent a lot of time with Gertrude Stein. He wasn't too rough around the edges for that.
00:27:20
Speaker
Apparently not they liked each other in the beginning. Okay, in the beginning. And then they had a major, a major falling out. And she never said anything nice about her after about 1929, I would I think something like that.
00:27:37
Speaker
But she was the center of the literary salons and, frankly, the art salons at the time. And you'd go there, and Picasso would be there, and Hemingway would be there, and other writers and dancers. And, I mean, it was just, it was the place to be, if you're interested in the- Oh, my favorite writers hung out in Prague, but- Oh, you know, okay, well, are you baiting me?
00:28:04
Speaker
If you've been listening to the podcast, in the first season, there was a run of me mentioning living in Prague, and I think Joe's baiting me, which is- And actually, more than people realize, because I cut some of those out. Yeah, I know. At the time, actually, at the time, it was a very similar kind of thing, right? It was people escaping a bad economy in North America, and you could live in Prague very cheaply, the same kind of thing as Paris of the 20s. And people were calling Prague the Paris of the 20s, but I don't think any Hemingways came out of
00:28:37
Speaker
I'm working, but I don't think I'm any Hemingway.
Paris in the 1920s: Inspiration and Fascination
00:28:42
Speaker
I like adjectives too much. Yeah, me too. We used to make fun of Hemingway in high school. We had to read For Whom the Bell Tolls, so we would make fun of Hemingway. We'd do their dialogue. It's like, Kefaw, that is a hill. Truly, that is a hill to testament. What a hill it is. Yes, it is a hill.
00:29:05
Speaker
It is a hill. Exactly. That's exactly it. Now, Terry, I assume you've been to Paris yourself? Yeah, many, many times. My wife and I go there. In the last dozen years, we've gone like every every two years. And and we always were creatures of the left bank, which is where all of this was happening in the 1920s.
00:29:31
Speaker
I seldom venture over to the right side of the sand, the right bank of the sand when we're there, but occasionally we do. But we just feel really at home on the left bank and in this certain neighborhood that we have gravitated to, which is a block away from Le Dumago, which was one of Hemingway's favorite cafes. It's a five-minute walk from the Luxembourg Gardens.
00:29:56
Speaker
It's all those things you read about when you read about Paris in the 1920s. Is that Montparnasse? Yeah, it's called Montparnasse. We're a little bit further towards the Seine than actually Montparnasse, but it's an easy walk to Montparnasse. Every other trip I go, I do the Hemingway walking tour. I think I could probably give that tour now. But it is funny. But Paris, as I wrote in my latest novel,
00:30:25
Speaker
because Paris figures in my latest novel. You know, Paris is a time machine. It's very nature, it's architecture, the way it's laid out. It is very resistant to change. And all of those cafes where all those people hung out, they're all still in the same place and they're all, you know, they might have a new awning and a new sign outside, but inside,
00:30:49
Speaker
Le Dumagot hasn't changed or La Rotonde or La Cupul, they haven't changed at all. They're all exactly as they were. The floor is the same floor, the parquet, the tiled floors. So you can just go and it's so easy to drift back in time when you're sitting in one of those cafes because that's what they looked like.
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah. I almost hesitate to ask, but did you enjoy that movie that Woody Allen did about that? Midnight in Paris? I did. I enjoyed it. I mean, I was always going to like that movie, I think. Yeah, it was kind of like made for you, really, it sounds like. Yeah, kind of like it was made for me. But I thought Hemingway was over the top. Yeah.
00:31:35
Speaker
But, you know, just to see those scenes again. And, you know, we live just a few blocks that we live. Our hotel that we stay in and go to Paris, it feels like we're living there because we've been so often. But it's about a two-minute walk from the famous staircase that Owen Wilson would be on when he got picked up in the old car. But so I liked it for sentimental reasons, I guess. I'm not sure it was ever going to win any major awards.
00:32:02
Speaker
But I've always been fascinated by the idea of not time travel. I mean, that seems to me as an engineer, a man of science, something that we're never going to get to. But if I had one wish, put it that way, one wish, it would be to be able to
00:32:21
Speaker
go back in time as a cognizant visitor from our time. Otherwise, you want to be aware that you are back in time. And Paris in the 20s is probably one of my first stops on that tour.
00:32:37
Speaker
Mark, we need to devote a podcast to time travel. It's a very common theme on this podcast. We've mentioned time travel, almost every podcast. It doesn't matter who it is. Really? Yeah, but I think it's natural because if you think about it, writing fiction is a form of time travel. Of course, yeah. Right? Back and forward. So it makes sense that we talk about it a lot.
00:32:57
Speaker
The idea has been with me for such a long time. I remember reading, I tried to get my hands on books that were written by diaries of sailors on tall ships or something, because that seemed to me to be the closest thing to being there. He just wrote that in that moment. So I've been thinking about
00:33:16
Speaker
how we can go back in time for a long time. And it just, I haven't come up with anything brilliant how it's going to happen, but there was a movie called Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour once. I like that movie. That affected me, I think, because of my interest in time travel. I mean, it wasn't going to win anything either, but it was a nice movie.
00:33:38
Speaker
I also liked the one they made with, I can't remember what this one was called, but the premise was HG Wells went forward in time to catch a serial killer from the Victorian era. Have you seen that movie, Joe? Yes. Our listeners are angrily screaming at their iPods now. That's right. That's what the title is, but if only there was some kind of device we could check.
00:33:59
Speaker
wasn't that bad guy Malcolm McDowell or Malcolm McDowell was the killer. Yeah. Yeah. Remember that one was cool. Another question related to how's your French? My French isn't bad, Joe. Thank you for asking. I I'm a product of the Toronto
00:34:16
Speaker
district school board French program. I took French until grade 13. I'm old enough that I had to do grade 13. So my French is quite formal and my accent I don't think is too bad, but you know the problem is I get a few phrases down pat and I deliver them and the person I'm speaking to assumes I can speak French then and they respond and I'm lost.
00:34:41
Speaker
So if they speak slowly I can I can generally keep up but I'm not I'm not great. I worked in a in a unilingual francophone member of parliament's office In my years in politics and that helped but I actually think it was the grounding I had in grammar in in French class from grade five until grade 13 That helped it. So I have I feel like I have a bit of a French
00:35:09
Speaker
language infrastructure established from that experience that I dust off every couple of years when I go to Paris and it takes me a you know a day or so and then I'm feeling oh I'm I'm getting it and sometimes it blends together you know someone will say something with a French accent in English and I'll go
00:35:30
Speaker
He literally stopped. Oh, no, that was English. Okay. Now I know why I got it. They're just messing with you, man. Anyway, it's fun. I hope it continues to get better because that would mean I'm going back to Paris often enough that it might improve.
00:35:48
Speaker
Now you mentioned Ford Maddox Ford as one of the writers who was in Paris at that time. I heard a story about Ford Maddox Ford, maybe you know, because you've researched some of this, read books about that period. I heard the story. I've never heard it verified since, but somebody, he was at an event and somebody asked him how his latest book did. And he told them, wow.
00:36:08
Speaker
I'm pretty good. I think it sold like 20,000 copies. And they were like, oh, wow, that's pretty impressive. And then they wandered away. And then the person standing next to him who was involved in the book business and knew the truth said to him, now you and I both know that book only sold 2000 copies. Why did you tell him 20,000? And he said, well, he's like in the world of popular fiction. Those are the numbers that he expects. So really in his world, it equates to 20,000.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeah. So, and you had told us the numbers of your books earlier in this podcast. So I'm wondering if that's possible that maybe you, that's a hard journalism. One of you guys to play more like Callahan. One of you has to play Hemingway. We're going to have a fist fight and see what happens. That's it. As long as the timekeeper keeps proper time. I am of course only kidding. I don't know. I know, but it's funny you can say that. Notice I haven't told you about my book sales of the other books, just the one that Canada reads. Seriously, Canada reads is
00:37:08
Speaker
That's the only reason that book has sold 150,000 copies. But I hope it's drawn readers to my other novels. But I think the nearest one to that has probably sold about 60,000 copies. So like I said, that's the Canada Reads effect. Yeah. Well, 60,000 is a best seller for sure.
00:37:27
Speaker
many times over in Canada. Yeah, that's always a question. What is a bestseller? As far as the publishers are concerned, a bestseller is if it appeared on the bestseller's list. Oh, okay. Yeah, I guess that number is changing, isn't it? That's what they say. And yeah, I've been very lucky. All of mine have been on the bestseller's list. Wouldn't have been without Canada Reads, I don't think. And
00:37:55
Speaker
I never say no when I'm invited to go into a book club or to a library in a rural village in Eastern Ontario. And I actually quite enjoy doing that. But I think it's really helpful when you get a chance to promote the book, to go and do that. So I've done
00:38:18
Speaker
So I didn't know this, but somebody emailed me two years ago now and said, did you know you've just given your 1000th book talk? Oh, wow. Wow. That's fabulous. He's gone through my, I've archived all my appearances on, on my website, just if only as a, as a record of it all, because that's what I refer to when, what am I doing this week? Well, I've had to do that and I just have them all archived and some guy,
00:38:46
Speaker
with far too much time on his hand, counted them all and emailed me that. So yeah, I've done probably 1,100 or so book talks. That's in Winston Churchill territory. I read a biography of him recently. He did so many speeches before he did his big famous
00:39:06
Speaker
Right. We shall fight in the open of the oceans and the trenches and the beaches. So I imagine you could probably deliver a heck of a speech now. I'm sure I could. I could mobilize an entire nation to. But it's just and lots of writers and you guys know this year, both writers, you know, other writers, lots of writers don't don't like. Well, public speaking is not a natural act. And it's one of our primal fears as a species. But
00:39:35
Speaker
I think because I was in the consulting agency world, I was spending my life in boardrooms pitching our services, trying to get them to sign with us, that I find it quite easy and refreshing and fun to go to a library where there are 12 people standing there, six of whom had never heard of you. And I have a PowerPoint on each of my novels and I give a little talk. And if you just connect with a couple of them and they read the book and like it,
00:40:05
Speaker
And some people say, why would you go to a book club where they've already bought the book? Because they bought it to read for their book club. Why would you go there? You've already made the sales. But I go there and I talk to their book club because I want them to buy my next book. Yeah, exactly. Or your other books.
00:40:26
Speaker
Yeah and it's not just about selling the books i would imagine no it's a if you're a good person and general and you're being genuine when you're with them and you're.
00:40:39
Speaker
helpful and kind and charming and maybe funny a few times and nice. They will think more favorably about your next book, even if it's not as good as the previous one. But you have put a goodwill deposit in the bank. And I think that's been very helpful to me when a new book comes out. I always tell writers to get invited somewhere.
00:41:03
Speaker
Just go. Just say yes and go. So, amazingly, I have been invited to two book clubs for my books. Excellent. One of which was yours. I remember. Yes. I remember. Yes. Yeah. But you weren't there. You weren't there. I was probably out at another book club. Yeah, probably, yeah. But that was great fun. It is great.
00:41:29
Speaker
What's not to like? These are people who love books and they've read your book.
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah. They're, they're my friends, even if they didn't like the book. I mean, exactly. I do find the, on these two occasions, I mean, I was very honored and it was wonderful. It was Timothy Neeson. Yeah. Who invited me to that one. Yeah. I did find them a little uncomfortable after a while being the center of attention and then going away afterwards feeling, Oh man, I, I said too much. I talked too much. You know, I don't, you ever feel that way or? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Well,
00:42:03
Speaker
at London Words Fest, Writers Festival in London, Ontario. I did my talk in the afternoon, Saturday afternoon.
00:42:14
Speaker
This is, I sort of, I gaffed in the question period. A woman I know who is a great writer, she's written three or four books. I blurbed one of them or maybe two of them. And she's very nice. And she interviewed me on stage at the London Writers Society last May. So she stood up and said nice things about my talk. And I took the opportunity to say, well,
00:42:42
Speaker
If you don't know, this is Elaine Kugler, and she's a fine writer as well. And I encourage you to look up her website and get her books, because they're really good. And someone said, well, how do you spell her name? And I spelled it incorrectly. I spelled it C-O-U-G-L-A-R. And I heard you say, no, no, it's E-R. I mean, sorry, it's E-R. I was thinking of Cougar.
00:43:08
Speaker
Oh, because Cougar is A.R., right? Her name is Kugler, like it's almost the same. And of course, she's an older woman and everyone broke out laughing and I hadn't even realized I put my foot in. So I got on the train that night thinking, you know, you're an idiot.
00:43:30
Speaker
Oh my goodness, yeah. It happens. Of course. But I think you get cut a lot of slack. I mean, we are all the same people we were now than before we wrote our books. Yet the fact that you've written a book, most people have never met an author before. And it's when they have an author coming to their book club,
00:43:53
Speaker
like it's it's sometimes for them sort of a big deal though it's we can't understand why but but it is so you get cut a lot of slack and if you're a comic novelist like i am doing a talk or at a book club they're ready to laugh
00:44:10
Speaker
You can say something that isn't even remotely funny and they will think, oh, that's hilarious. And they will start laughing because they're primed and ready. And that's pure kindness and generosity on their part. You know, I still think it's worth the time and effort. And it is time and it is effort to go to these places and to meet with them. But they're the ones who are buying your books. So I think it's time well spent.
00:44:38
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think you're preaching to the choir here. Yes, exactly. And if anyone ever invites us. Yeah, I've been to one book club. Go to more. Yeah, I was gonna add a question though, because that was one thing that I came away from a book club experiences. They wanted a definitive answer for something that I didn't want to give an answer to. Right. I'm sure that has happened to you. How does that how do you handle that?
00:45:05
Speaker
Well, if I know the answer, I just pretend I don't know the answer. If I don't want to give the answer. It hasn't come up very often.
Engaging with Readers and Book Clubs
00:45:16
Speaker
What happens more often is that the reader, the reader makes assumptions about a point I'm trying to make. They will say, were you thinking about Dante's Inferno when you wrote this scene and how it
00:45:30
Speaker
connects with me and the last days and I'll just nod. I can't believe you picked up on that. That's really something. That's exactly what I was trying to go for.
00:45:46
Speaker
I will come clean and often they are imputing or they're endowing me with far more thought and knowledge than I have. I just set them straight. I make a big joke out of saying, well, yes, exactly. Good for you. And then I say, I have no idea why that turned out the way it did, but that wasn't the reason.
00:46:10
Speaker
Yeah i had a character in it sorry i had a character in the book of the name of will to bear and somebody said he's often bewildered i thought that was very clever of you know to call will to bear and he's bewildered.
00:46:24
Speaker
I had that thought actually when I read the book. Well, that's interesting. He will bear. I just wanted to make sure Terry had a chance to talk about his new book because it's largely set in Paris, right?
00:46:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's certainly half is set in Paris. This novel was a bit of a departure for me. It was the first novel I wrote post-retirement. It was the first novel I wrote with more time at my disposal to really sink myself into the story. And I wrote the novel in the middle of the pandemic.
00:47:08
Speaker
And I think I was affected the way most of us were affected by the pandemic, feeling a little socially isolated and grieving some friends and family, some of whom had not made it through the pandemic. So I remember this story began to emerge in my adult brain pan, and it started with a narrator who was grieving the loss of his wife.
00:47:36
Speaker
The novel opens two and a half years after his wife had been one of the first COVID victims in Toronto. And he's not doing so well. And it doesn't really sound like the kind of comic premise that might underpin some of my other novels. But I think I felt, and I almost realized this in hindsight, I'm not sure I knew it, I was conscious of it at the time, but I think I was worried that if I didn't,
00:48:05
Speaker
at least recognize the struggles that were going on out there and the pandemic in general and the loss, living with loss, that readers would say, well, what are you doing? Where's the pandemic? This was a big deal in our life and you just went right by it and you're not even, you didn't see us. So that, it sort of stayed with me. And I also took a page out of John Irving's handbook. I'm a huge John Irving fan.
00:48:33
Speaker
And he said, yeah, well, he says he writes about that which he fears most and what he hopes never happens to him or to anyone he loves. And, you know, the thought of losing, I just hope I predecease my spouse as the thought of losing my spouse, particularly unexpectedly when you couldn't be with her at the end, because in those early days of the pandemic, you couldn't go into the room. Yeah.
00:49:02
Speaker
It was a terrible way for families to suffer loss. Anyway, that's what was coming into my mind and that's the story I wrote. So I faced the fear instead of casting it aside.
00:49:17
Speaker
And I put laughs in where it made sense. So the humor is a bit more organic than perhaps in some of my other novels. I didn't bend the story to my will to create comic situations, which is what you can do. And I have done. I just followed this storyline and ended up being like a love. It's a love story, loss and recovery, coming back from it, living again. So,
00:49:45
Speaker
I hope it's funny in places. It also talks about male friendship. It talks about aging. I've never written a narrator who's my own age, which tells you how old I think I am. So I finally wrote a narrator who's my own age. And he's coming to grips with the aging process as I am. So I gave it to my narrator in the hopes that I might learn something. And it talks about songwriting.
00:50:14
Speaker
and which has been a big but private part of my life since I was 17 years old. And I'd never written about, strangely, I'd never written about songwriting before, though I have spent, not so much now, but a lot of my time doing that. So I wrote about, I gave songwriting to my narrator and I actually included in the novel two original songs, one I wrote about 15 years ago and one I wrote 42 years ago.
Music and Audiobook Integration
00:50:43
Speaker
that I actually recorded in the studio and they're laid into the audio book, the actual song. When they came to the movies, all of a sudden there, my guitar starts and I start singing, which was, you know, I've never been suffering under the delusion that music would one day be my career. I'm good enough to know that I'm not good enough. And I played in a band in university and that kind of stuff. But it's always been private.
00:51:12
Speaker
You know, I've probably written 30 or 40 songs and maybe six people have heard some of them. Well, and yeah, it's something you do for pleasure. And I think, yeah, all art doesn't need to be for public consumption. It can sometimes just be for ourselves. Exactly. And when you hear these songs, you might agree. That reminds me of one of my favorite Harry Taping songs is Mr. Tanner. Yeah. Yeah. Which is about that.
00:51:40
Speaker
He's a bear tone. He presses clothes and he sings and all his friends say, you should go be a singer and it doesn't work out. Then he doesn't want to sing anymore. It's tragic. It's really tragic. As most of their Chapin songs are. That's true. But yeah, it's that very idea that just because you have an art doesn't mean you necessarily have to share it because it could just feed your own soul. That's all that's required.
00:52:09
Speaker
That's exactly, that's exactly right. And that's how I always thought of it. And I sort of got talked into putting them in the audio book and I don't regret it, but, and, you know, the, was that Ann did that? No. No, my, my producer, she's left now, but she's not there anymore. But she, because she insisted that your work be included in the audio book.
00:52:31
Speaker
She didn't insist it. It was just an idea they had when they found out that the songs were real. They didn't know that the songs were real until they read the author's note at the point of the novel. And they said, have you got recordings? And I just recorded them last August. And a producer made me sound probably as good as I will ever sound, which is still not
00:52:56
Speaker
saying very much. And I sent her the recordings and she really liked them, so she said, can we put them in? And not at the back, we want to put them in, like when they come up in the story. Well, I think you're sufficiently piquing everybody's interest now that there's going to be a run in this audio book. There you go. It's the perfect medium to pitch that to all three people who are going to go by the book.
00:53:20
Speaker
At the Book Drunkard Festival in Uxbridge, I have a professional musician friend who I also play ball hockey with, which is in the novel also. He's a writer too and a bit of a philosopher. But we perform the songs live. It seemed like a good idea eight months earlier when
00:53:40
Speaker
when the creative director of the Book Drunkard Festival suggested it. And I said, sure. And then it seemed like a progressively worse idea as the weeks passed. But we got through it. We got through it. And it was kind of fun. But anyway.
00:53:58
Speaker
Well, I think it's a very cool. So unfortunately I'm going to, uh, I'm going to wrap up the podcast now before you tell us you have to go to a dinner, um, which, which may become a running joke in this podcast. We'll just send everyone a parachute before they get on the podcast so we can see the polling, the ripcord and yeah.
00:54:17
Speaker
That's right. But Mark, any further questions before we let? No, I just, I really, I just, I was very proud of you, man. I think you've done amazing work. You were there at the very beginning. I remember when you were talking about podcasting your book. It's that was so cool. Yeah. You inspired me to podcast Marvel's Harry. Actually, I wouldn't have done that otherwise. I'm good. Well, that was a great book. Thank you.
00:54:42
Speaker
Well, I have wanted to meet you for some time, so I'm really glad that we finally had the chance to do so virtually. Great pleasure talking to you today. Thanks for having me, guys. It's been my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, Terry. Terry Fallis, thank you.
00:55:18
Speaker
So Mark, you and I have discussed how people can support this podcast, and one of the ways I would like to get them to support us is by, and I think you're gonna like this, by purchasing one of your books. Ooh, I like that. How about your books? We're gonna start with your books. Start with my books? Okay. And today I would like to point people in particular to Alpha Max, which is a novel about the Metaverse, which is kind of in vogue these days.
00:55:40
Speaker
Yeah, and it doesn't take a lot of the standard approaches that the Metaverse stories do. I think it's a bit more grounded. It's funny, and it's witty, and it's smart, and it's entertaining. Go to recreative.ca slash support, and you can find your books there. Alpha Max by Mark A. Rainer.
00:56:17
Speaker
you