East-end girl

>> Will Aitken explores Japanese culture and Greek myth in Realia

by MATTHEW HAYS

Will Aitken's eyes light up as he recounts his first trip to Japan in 1985. "The first experience was weird, so strange," he says, recalling that he was sent to cover the first Tokyo Film Festival. "I was focused on navigating my way through the festival. But I caught the bug. I had to go back."

The Japanese trek stands out on a map of the Indiana-born author's life history, among some other key points. He moved to Montreal to study at McGill in the early '70s (hated McGill, loved the city), founded L'Androgyne, the city's gay/lesbian bookstore in '74, became a Canadian citizen in '82 and wrote two celebrated novels (1989's Terre Haute and 1993's A Visit Home).

But at this moment, the Japan thing seems most significant, considering his latest novel, Realia, is an inspired and fantastical visit to Japan, through the eyes of a feisty young Albertan woman, Louise. "This really isn't a realistic glimpse of Japan," warns Aitken, while adding, seemingly paradoxically, "but almost everything that happens in the book happened in reality."

It's the realia thing

Thus there are moments of keen observation in the novel--from its opening pages, we are tuned into the experience of ordering ice in a Japanese hotel--which stand beside Greek mythological references and an outrageous plot line. Set amid the Asian economic boom of the '80s, Realia has Louise working as an English instructor and dialogue coach at the School of Heartful Purity, a bizarre spot where Western stage musicals are performed with all-girl casts. Louise finds herself caught up in a national scandal involving a pop sensation called Oro. With Realia, Aitken has taken on a daunting task, collapsing Greek myth, Japanese pop culture and a stream-of-consciousness rhythm into one book. He's managed to do so here, with wicked sense of humour never far behind.

"A few years ago, someone said to me that I was much funnier in person than I was in my books," says Aitken. "So I wanted to let that rip. I had felt in the past that I'd had to treat topics in a certain way. So I asked myself: how do you approach things in your own life? For me, there's a mixture of extreme melodramatic suffering and then there's this complete craziness and wildness, this humour of desperation. When things get toughest, that's when I get funniest. It was great to let that go."

In touch with his inner girlfriend

As well as the healthy streak of humour, Aitkenphiles will also notice another key shift in Realia: Louise is the author's first female protagonist. "That was wonderful. The woman inside me has never been buried very deep--letting her out was really liberating. I wasn't prepared for how much fun it was. It felt a lot more free. Ever since I've been a kid, I've been a woman-identified man, because I've always liked women a lot more than men. Which is weird, because I'm sexually attracted to men. But women always seemed more approachable and open about their emotions."

In fact, the character of Louise arose directly from a young eponymous woman Aitken met in Montreal through a mutual friend. "I met some younger women friends from out west and they were quite different from women of my generation. They seemed so much more wild in the streets. I just saw the way they met the world, with this straight-on, fuck-you attitude. And I thought it would be great to have a character like that, who was like them, who had their freedom and latitude. They would never stop to think, 'Is this the way a woman should behave?'"

Realia, the title of which Aitken derived from the archaeological term, is also a different book because of the author's own attitude towards it. "I had this fear about the first two books, about how they would be received and I worried that they weren't good enough. With this one there's still this stress of public exposure, but it's weird, I feel hyperconfident about it. If the book is a big failure, I'll feel disappointed, but it won't change the way I feel about it.

"I've poured everything I have at this point into the book, and no matter what happens, I'm really elated about it."

Realia, by Will Aitken, Random House, hc, 259pp, $29.95. Aitken will read from Realia at the book's launch tonight, Thursday, Sept. 7, 7pm at Indigo Bookstore (1500 McGill College)\