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Michael Winter: Thinly Veiled Finding the Words is a compelling new anthology in which 31 well-known writers contemplate their craft -- revealing surprising and often deeply personal insights into the writing process. Published by McClelland & Stewart, the anthology is a fundraiser for PEN Canada, an non-profit organization that works to defend freedom of expression and support those around the world who suffer persecution for what they have written.
Over the new two weeks, CBC Books is proud to present four excerpts from the anthology, taking you inside the minds of some of the literary voices you know and love. Here, Michael Winter talks about working with Lisa Moore in St. John's. 
MICHAEL WINTER When I was twenty-one, I bought a pair of dress pants and applied for a summer job with Public Legal Information in St. John's. I lived in a one-room ground-floor apartment where, at night, you could hear people talking as they walked along the street. Their feet were a foot away from my pillow. I first met Lisa Moore at this job. We were both hired to write radio scripts that dealt with legal issues; the scripts were to be read by the in-house lawyer and a regional CBC Radio host, so they had to be written in a conversational tone, as though the speakers were thinking up these legal issues on the spot. As part of our research, we were encouraged to drop down to the courthouse and watch the proceedings, to get a feel for how justice is conducted. The courthouse was being sandblasted, and each stone removed, cleaned, and reinserted in the wall. It was a process that had been going on ever since I'd moved to St. John's and I sort of thought that's what you did with the stones of justice: spruce them up to keep things spotless. There was a police lock-up in the basement and sometimes you'd see policemen wearing bulletproof vests opening the trunk of a cruiser to deposit their arms and ammunition, and then escorting a hand-cuffed character in through the lock-up's two heavy doors. St. John's is a small place, and you end up drinking in bars with the best writers and musicians and lawyers and criminals. A man could come into the bar and lift his shirt and there'd be two grocery store steaks on Styrofoam pads shoved in his pants. And he'd walk around until he'd sold them. There was one long night when a friend of mine cautioned me that I was accepting White Russians from a man named Hook the Crook whose specialty was aiming for the soft areas. Lisa Moore was writing short stories and encouraging everyone around her to do the same. She suggested I take notes the way a painter might make a sketch to later reproduce accurately the colours in a landscape. The other thing I started doing was copying down what people said, the words they used, and I remember discovering that how someone says a thing is often more important than the content of what they are saying. I recall one trial of a man who had allegedly stolen a car. He testified that he had found the car on Horsechops Lane down the Witless Bay Line and he had a car similar to it Your Honour that needed a driver door and so all he took off the stolen car was the door, and the police are tracking the ID plate from that door, but no he didn't steal that car at all, that car was found and it's still there down Horsechops Lane if the police ever got it together to go down there and take a look. His story sounded plausible to us. The police had made a big mistake, and his explanation of events seemed entirely credible. We were convinced of his innocence, or at least doubted his guilt, until the judge, at sentencing, made some weary remarks. The judge, holding his head as though it took all of his patience not to blow up, tore apart every statement the accused had made, and suddenly, in a matter of five minutes, even I realized that the person in the docket had brazenly stolen the car in question and lied through his teeth about it. It made me realize how gullible I am, and how professional criminals can sound honest. They are used to lying so proficiently that they in fact must believe what they are saying -- they have convinced themselves that they are innocent. Soon after this job ended, Lisa persuaded me to take a creative writing class taught by Larry Mathews, and since then, I'm sorry to say, I haven't really had a decent job. But I've learned from that courthouse experience, and I use the same format that lawyers and judges use in coming to a decision. I realized, too, that often in our domestic lives, when we're in an argument and feel hard done by, we all, to some degree, lie to ourselves about what we are guilty of. We steal the good nature from others and then pretend we are innocent as babies. I've written stories with this sort of theme in them. And when I started writing fiction, I liked observing life and writing down those details and those emotional crests and troughs. It was sort of selfish, but it can be satisfying to make art of events that happen to you or to the people around you. And in the twenty years since then, I've written stories and novels that had this hidden sort of jury and testimony, concealing from the reader my agenda in order to convince you that what I was telling was the truth. When someone asks me if my work is autobiographical, I say thank you, I got you, you believed me, I was convincing. I fooled the judge! Read more excerpts from Finding the Words: Heather O'Neill: "A Story Without Words" |
