Five Questions For Author Wayne Johnston

Recently long-listed for the Giller Prize, Wayne Johnston’s latest novel A World Elsewhere was inspired by the Vanderbilt’s opulent mansion tucked in the wilds of North Carolina. Zoomer sat down with the author to talk fathers and sons, blending history with fiction, and writers burning their work.

 

Athena McKenzie: Even though you’ve lived away from Newfoundland for awhile now, do you think it will continue to influence your writing?

AM: Was that the case with A World Elsewhere?

WJ: I considered it. Biltmore [the Vanderbilt’s mansion in North Carolina] was kind of the germ of the idea but often the germ of a novel turns out to be not the most important part. The most important part of this book, I think, is the two characters of Deacon and Landish and their relationship. Without them I don’t think Biltmore would be able to carry a book. When I was writing about the Vanderbilts I knew they needed to be offset with someone or something, so that’s how I went back in my imagination to Newfoundland. I came up with Landish first and the book sort of took shape in a kind of patchwork way and then I reworked it so it was as fluid as I could make it. That’s often the case with me. When I wrote Navigator of New York, all I really knew was that I was going to write about Peary and Cook’s race for the North Pole. But I often find that I need an outside perspective on historical events. The actual historical figures like Peary and Cooks or the Vanderbilts are not the best point of views to write historical fiction from. I’d rather have someone who is detached but highly intelligent.  Who does have to be involved in the action and does have to have a stake in the outcome, but also is untethered by the facts of history. When I do that, it usually allows me more leeway with simply inventing aspects of history that never actually happened. Not everybody likes the idea, or gets the idea of combining history and fiction. They want their history or they want their fiction and they have this idea the two are completely severed and they’re not. They’re joined at the hip. When history was first written it was about 90 per cent fiction and the first so-called novels were actually epic poems. My belief is that in early days history and fiction were broken apart and they’ve been trying to find each other ever since. To marry the two of them in a book seems entirely normal to me. In fact it seems to me that every book does that to some degree. If you broadly define history as personal history there’s not a book on the planet that hasn’t combined the two.

AM: There was some outcry about this after Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Does that cause you any hesitation when you combine history and fiction now?

WJ: I felt, “This is what I do.” In this book I do have an authors note at the beginning. Some readers have said that it’s probably meant to be taken ironically and I don’t really need it. What it’s meant to do is show the reader that even if you change the names of what are obviously historical figures, people are going to think of the historical figures anyway. When Colony came out people said all you had to do to avoid all this controversy was call Smallwood, you know, “Bigtree,” or just anything but Smallwood. That’s not the case, because the biographical facts of this character’s life would match Smallwood anyway. They would read it as if it was Smallwood, so it’s the same thing. The only reason I changed the names in A World Elsewhere is just to show the reader that very fact. I have said to people who have read the book, “When you come across the name Vanderluyden, you think Vanderbilt in your head.”

AM: You said earlier that Landish and Deacon are the heart of the novel. Was the father-son relationship something you wanted to explore?

WJ: Yes. Landish and Deacon are not related but they do have a father-son relationship. I don’t have any kids and it may have been my way of writing about being a dad. Because I’m not a dad I could at least imagine what having a kid sort of put upon me might be like. I wanted Landish to be doing his living best to raise this kid properly but also unconventionally. Instead of parroting religious notions to him he kind of invents a holy cosmology for Deacon. The tomb of time, the womb of time, justice, things like that. It catches Deacon’s imagination more. Materially they have a hard time with it for a while. And to anybody who thinks that Landish is idealized, I don’t think they’ve read very carefully. Landish gets drunk instead of paying the rent. And it’s the rent on an attic. A lot of people have said that I am Landish in this book, but I don’t think so. I wouldn’t burn 5000 pages.