King on the world

>> Thomas King on the future of the human race

by JULIET WATERS

Thomas King explains that the germs of novels are usually planted from listening to stories. "I heard this great story at a conference about this Indian guy who was burned to death in the trunk of a car. They were all set to charge this other guy, who'd been accused of threatening him, with murder. What really happened is that the first guy was worried about getting beat up, so he hid in the trunk. He was drunk, and while he was waiting, he decided to have a cigarette. Well, in the back of the car there's nothing but gas, so he blew himself up in this kind of BBQ suicide thing. Well that's a story that catches my imagination. It's a horrific story on the one hand. And yet it's got this awful kind of comedy to it."

King is the first to admit that he has a very cynical sense of humour. "Humankind, with our great brains, with our intellect--in so many ways we're just plain stupid. You can't be that stupid and survive. I don't think we'll last as long as the dinosaurs. I really don't. But maybe I'm wrong. I hope I am."

Black as his world view is, King still makes a pretty good poster boy for the power of negative thinking. He has that kind of charisma and presence that fills a room. Part Greek, part Cherokee, his life story is a poverty-to-success tale. Imagine him played by a young Anthony Quinn as a sort of Zorba the Indian.

King ascribes his cynicism to having been born on the wrong side of the tracks in Sacramento, to a single mother who raised him to live in both worlds, native and non-native. "I think most artists don't believe they can change the world, but they continue to produce, on the offhand chance that they might."

The product of his offhand approach has been three highly regarded novels, a Governor General's award in 1992 and a CBC miniseries based on his first novel, Medicine River, for which King wrote the screenplay.

Currently he's at work on a screenplay for Green Grass, Running Water and a TV sitcom which he describes as "a combination late-night news show, quiz show, soap opera--a whole bunch of different stupid things you see on TV, put in one spot so you don't have to change the dial." He's a regular contributor to CBC's Dead Dog Cafe, and continues to hold down his day job as an English professor at Guelph.

He's hesitant to publicize his academic side. The dedication in his latest novel Truth & Bright Water reads: "To my mother. The dissertation was never enough." And he claims, "People think that if you're an academic that this somehow makes you not a 'real' novelist."

The last time King was in town to read at Concordia, his advice to young writers was to give up writing novels and write screenplays ("They're so much easier" is what he said back then). But he has, fortunately, not taken his own advice, even though Truth & Bright Water turned out to be a struggle far more difficult than his previous novels.

Substantially more tragic and less satiric than past work, this novel took him six years to write. First drafts were so disappointing that even his mother didn't want the book dedicated to her. Eventually, after a dark month of the soul, King chopped out 160 pages, killed off a major character and split other major characters into several new ones.

The end result is a poignant coming of age story narrated by a 15 year old growing up in a border town in which the Canadian side is a reservation. It's a novel haunted by failed love, disappointing fathers, physical abuse and suicidal impulses. But this is Thomas King; woven amidst the sadness are trademark eccentric characters whose absurdist takes on life inevitably add a magical light that probably shouldn't be there, but thankfully is. :

Truth & Bright Water by Thomas King, Harper Flamingo, hc, 267pp, $32