Bookreporter.com - Author Profile: Barbara Gowdy

Barbara Gowdy

BIO

Barbara Gowdy's work, THE WHITE BONE, is being praised for its "audacious concept, inspired characterization and poignant message." It is the story of Mud, a young African elephant cow, whose courage and visionary powers guide her and her kin to a safe place away from the ivory poachers. Gowdy witnessed the real-life quest for survival on which this story is based, traveling to Kenya to study elephant behavior. Once again Gowdy draws readers into a strange fictional world, animating it with her convincing narrative and poetic vision of life.

Her previous book, MISTER SANDMAN, was Margaret Atwood's Book of the Year choice for the Times Literary Supplement, and it was also a Village Voice choice for Favorite Book of the Year. The film Kissed was inspired by a short story from her collection WE SO SELDOM LOOK ON LOVE.

Barbara Gowdy was born in Windsor in 1950, and moved to Toronto in 1954. She was editor and managing editor at Lester & Orpen Dennys Publishers from 1974-79. She has been a full-time writer since 1983.

INTERVIEW

June 23, 2000

Imagine the idea of never being able to forget...this is one of the themes that Barbara Gowdy ponders in her original novel, THE WHITE BONE, a book told only through the eyes of elephants. Jana Siciliano fell in love with this lyrical tale and had a chance to ask Gowdy about this book and her past novels. Learn how female elephants are the leaders of their tribes; find out what inspired Gowdy to write about necrophiles and Siamese twins; hear about her next novel which features human beings; and, finally, take her words of wisdom about writing to heart.

TBR: In your most recent book, THE WHITE BONE, elephants are the main characters, elephants who are searching for a new home. What was it that inspired you to create this magical, haunting tale?

BG: All my life I have been crazy about animals. I own a small library of field guides and natural history texts, and I have never not lived with at least one pet --- bird, dog, cat...squirrel! That I might write about animals eventually seemed inevitable. (A book of personal, passionate observations was what I had in mind.) That I might write about animals fictionally, and from their point of view, didn't occur to me until I saw a documentary narrated by Cynthia Moss, who has been working in East Africa for 30 years now as founder and director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project.

The Moss documentary includes a remarkable sequence showing a family of elephants coming upon a shattered elephant skeleton. In an eerie ceremony the elephants gently examine and fondle the bones, after which they cover them with dirt, turn their backs and wave a hind foot over the remains. Moss says that she has seen this foot-waving ritual many times and is unable to account for it. She wonders if elephants are able to sense some emanation, some spirit, rising from the bones of their dead.

Heartbreaking stuff, it goes without saying. But also highly intelligent stuff; evidence, I believe, of conscious perception. Before watching the documentary, I had read that the gigantic elephant brain is extremely convoluted and that the temporal lobes --- the sections of the brain where, in humans, memory is stored --- bulge out. (Human temporal lobes do not bulge out.) I had also read that elephants sometimes communicate with each other by way of low frequency rumbles inaudible to human ears and that these rumbles travel many miles. Now, here was a group of elephants exhibiting a kind of sacred understanding of death and I thought: Who are these creatures? What do they know that we can't begin to conceive of? What are their stories?

One thing I was sure of from the start was I didn't want to write a novel in the vein of WATERSHIP DOWN or ANIMAL FARM, that is to say, a novel designed to shed light on human folly through animal behavior. Rather than being a social satire, THE WHITE BONE is an attempt, however presumptuous, to make a huge imaginative leap --- to imagine what it would be like to be that big and gentle, to be that imperiled, and to have that prodigious a memory. It may well be true, by the way, that elephants never forget. Daphne Sheldrick, who raises orphan elephants near Nairobi, suspects that the elephant memory is perfect. With this stunning notion never far from my thoughts while I was writing THE WHITE BONE, I found myself grappling time and again with the meaning of memory itself. Imagine never forgetting. Imagine never being able to forget.

TBR: How did you go about researching information about elephants' lives for THE WHITE BONE?

BG: I read every book about elephants that I could get my hands on. Then I read about all the other creatures --- the reptiles, mammals, birds and so on --- that elephants, specifically Kenyan elephants, would come across during the course of any given day. I studied books on Kenyan botany. I listened to audio tapes of Kenyan wildlife. I watched dozens of documentaries. In the summer of 1996 I travelled to Africa and spent three weeks in the Masai Mara, where I was able to observe elephants in the wild. Back in Canada I befriended a 28-year-old African bull elephant at a refuge outside of Toronto. Unlike the three other elephants he lived with (all of them rescued from culls), he was not severely traumatized. He let me sit on his knee and ride on his back. His skin felt like warm rock.

TBR: The female elephants are the strongest characters in THE WHITE BONE, so capable, unafraid, able to handle any problem that arises, as well as suffering greatly from their children's deaths and other such tragedies. What about the female elephant did you learn when you were researching the book that led you to depict them with such grace and humor?

BG: First of all, female elephants in THE WHITE BONE are the strongest characters because, in the wild, elephants are matriarchies and the big females really are the leaders. I should probably point out that everything my elephant characters do lies within the realm of the possible. As a novelist I have simply taken observed behavior and credited it with a high level of intention. Until very recently animal scientists were prone to attributing to all non-human species the most brute and stupid of intention, since this was the least sentimental assumption, although the truth is, scientists would have been as accurate in their assumptions had they attributed to other species the most intelligent and conscious and wise of intentions. In THE WHITE BONE, I have done the latter. Recent advances in the study of animal behavior have lead many scientists to believe that non-human animals have emotions and even consciousness and that some, including elephants, have what appears to be a kind of language. So it occurred to me that these animals must also have stories. Certainly field research has consistently revealed that elephants, male and female alike, are compassionate, brave and mischievous.

TBR: In your 1997 short story collection, WE SO SELDOM LOOK ON LOVE, the title story concerns a woman who is a necrophiliac. It is a hard story to read, somewhat stomach-turning and yet it captures a very specific passion. What made you write this story?

BG: Every story in WE SO SELDOM LOOK ON LOVE is based on a rumour or anecdote. The title story was inspired by a magazine article about a beautiful female necrophile working at a morgue in California. What the article said the real-life necrophile did with her dead male lovers is what my character did. (I promise I couldn't have invented that!) With all of these stories I was trying to examine so-called abnormal behavior from the inside. The characters, including the necrophile, may seem odd; but they are harmless to other people. I am not interested in the mind of the sociopath, or even the creep.

TBR: This story was made into a film that was released with some controversy. What was your experience with the film adaptation? Were you involved at all?

BG: I didn't see the film until the final cut, so my only input was to get the voice-over reduced. Generally speaking, I object to voice-over. Films are meant to show, not tell; and when the film arises out of a short-story, viewers take for granted that the voice-over has been lifted from the text. In KISSED the voice-over is an amalgam of my words and the writer/director's. I ended up liking the film but continue to wince at the voice-over.

TBR: In your other stories in this collection, the main characters are often lost or abandoned and searching for a place to fit in. In SYLVIA, a girl with a Siamese twin body attached to her belly takes a job in a circus and then ends up having sex with a man who penetrates the twin body. It's an odd story --- what led you to this particular subject matter?

BG: Again, the story "Sylvie" deals with the concept of normalcy (a pernicious concept in that it changes from culture to culture and generation to generation) and was inspired by a true story. The real four-legged woman, Myrtle Corbin, exhibited in circuses during the final decades of the last century. Myrtle not only married a doctor, she bore him children, some purportedly entering the world out of one vagina, some out of the other. Unlike Sylvie, Myrtle lived in a time when difference was celebrated. Myrtle could have hidden her legs under the long, full skirts women wore back then but she chose not to.

TBR: You have a reputation for writing outrageous stories and trying to make the out-of-the-norm characters seem like everyday characters. What is your attitude about human nature in general? Is everyone touched with a certain outsiderness that shapes their lives? Are you an "outsider"?

BG: I love mankind in particular, that is to say I love and admire many individuals; but I despair of mankind in the general. Humans are neurotic apes. As self-appointed stewards of the Earth we have failed monumentally. As to "outsiderness" (is that a word?), sure, I think that everybody feels like a stranger to some degree and in some environment. I am no different from anyone else in that respect.

TBR: In your novel, MR. SANDMAN, you have a character who is a musical prodigy but doesn't speak or grow. Were you inspired by THE TIN DRUM at all in writing this book? And, if not, what was your inspiration for the Canary family?

BG: I have yet to read THE TIN DRUM or to see the movie, so, obviously, neither one inspired MISTER SANDMAN. The Canary family was simply another vehicle for investigating the notion of normalcy. Also I wondered what would happen if a family's most intimate secrets were revealed to all the members simultaneously. Would they survive such a revelation? And how many of our secrets really go unsuspected by those closest to us?

TBR: Where did you grow up? When did your interest in the darker side of humanity develop and how?

BG: I grew up in a Toronto suburb called Don Mills. I led a safe, predictable life --- working father, housewife mother, two sisters (one older, one younger) and an older brother. I couldn't say where my interest in the darker side of humanity came from. Maybe I've just kept my eyes open. I protest that I do see the brighter side, too; the absurd side especially.

TBR: When you first started writing, did you worry that the macabre nature of your work would make your career a risky venture? Or has it worked to your advantage?

BG: My first published book, THROUGH THE GREEN VALLEY (hideous title, not mine) is a serious historical novel devoid of anything risky. It's very earnest, very sensitive. Fortunately, it's out of print. My next novel, FALLING ANGELS, could be considered odd in some aspects; but it's not in the least macabre. In any case, I wouldn't advise any writer to worry about reception while he or she is writing. You write what you write. You go where your mind takes you.

TBR: Do you ever find subjects too taboo to discuss?

BG: Taboo...well, I don't know quite what to make of that word. Let's just say I have no desire to write from the point of view of characters who are cruel or stupid or brain-damaged. Such people are usually incapable of the kind of reflection that gives a novel its moral core.

TBR: When you start a book or story do you research, outline and write, or just steam ahead and start writing?

BG: Both my first novel and my most recent required thousands of hours of research. For THROUGH THE GREEN VALLEY I visited Ireland and Wales; for THE WHITE BONE I went to Africa. Otherwise, I research as I go, with only a tenuous storyline to guide me.

TBR: What is your everyday writing schedule?

BG: I don't write every day. For several months of the year I'm obliged to go on promotion tours, and I can't get any writing done in hotel rooms. Also the business of writing (answering these kinds of questions, for instance) eats up hours of time. When I do have a few months to devote to a novel I tend to write five hours a day, four days a week.

TBR: What kind of reaction do you get in the United States now that your work is being published here? In Canada, you can't seem to put a word on paper without winning awards.

BG: The reaction I have gotten in the US varies with each book. MISTER SANDMAN got a great critical response but the sales were ho-hum. THE WHITE BONE sold well, but the critical response veered wildly from city to city and publication to publication. That's as I expected, though. An adult novel told from the point of view of elephants isn't going to be to everyone's taste.

TBR: What are you working on now?

BG: A novel. Featuring human beings.

TBR: How do you spend your time when you're not writing?

BG: Gardening, renovating my house, raising money for animal welfare, walking, trying to be a good daughter, aunt, lover, friend.

TBR: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

BG: Read everything, especially the classics and poetry. Eavesdrop on real conversations. Don't watch too much TV, nobody talks like TV people do. Don't ever be too attached to anything you've written; you are the vehicle for the word, not it's creator. Write what you're obsessed by.