2015 Winner- No Relation by Terry Fallis

My Relation to No Relation  

“Dick … Dick.”

“Is there a Dick ?” the barista shouts.

“We’ve got a grandé nonfat latté for -  a Dick.”

Smirks.  Snickering sounds.  Throat clearing.

“Uh, uh … that would be me.”

Given the double-entendre awkwardness, you might ask - Why doesn’t he use a pseudonym at Starbucks?

But, as I will explain later, I stick with “Dick” out of the same sense of familial duty and respect that bound struggling writer and underwear heir Earnest Hemmingway to his given name.  Earnest is the protagonist in No Relation, the second book to win a Leacock Medal (2015) for Toronto novelist and PR guy Terry Fallis.

In the book, Earnest suffers with a name that evokes that of the Nobel Laureate and thus invites unfortunate comparisons as well as suspicion and complication into his daily life.  But the not-famous and double “m” Hemmingway dismisses suggestions that he shed his troublesome name.  It came to him through his father, another Earnest Hemmingway and another eldest male in the line of underwear manufacturers.  Earnest, our No Relation hero, is the fourth one and efficiently referred to as EH IV in business and family circles, but elsewhere he wears the yoke of confusion and comparison.

The book tells the intertwined story of Hemmingway’s effort to extinguish expectations that he will take over the family firm while also trying to shake off the ghost of Ernest M. Hemingway, the better known writer, whom lesser known Earnest - with an “a” - blames for his own writer’s block.

The first thread encompasses Earnest’s more deserving, business-minded, but overlooked younger sister, and the latter story line prompts him to take a Michael Palin Hemingway Adventure tour in the hope of confronting and exorcising that famous-author ghost.

The double-barrelled journey carries the reader along, and Fallis sprinkles his usual self-deprecating, gentle humour throughout along with inoffensive, but quirky characters and some cremated remains.

Fallis employs lots of standard humour writing tools, but not in excess or in concentration, and it may be this orchestration of the parts that gives his work its broad appeal.  He, for example, has a few similar-sounding episodes of slapstick like the bar fight in Key West,  ejection from the DMV in New York, and the spilling of those ashes in Paris that seem nicely spaced to jolt the reader and break up the gentler, unhurried humour of the larger stories at play.

Interestingly, Terry Fallis, as expressed through Earnest and in his own talks, is not Hemingway’s greatest fan, finds terseness cold, and enjoys ameliorating words, explanatory dialogue, and clearly attributed quotes. 

Rather than a fault, this inclination might be at least one reason books by Terry Fallis are so accessible and so darn popular.

Aside from the humour and easy read, No Relation can be seen as a reference for family relationships – I think it makes a good Father’s Day gift as the book spins around both father-son and father-daughter dynamics – and as Will Ferguson suggests it’s an exploration of the question of “Who are you really?”

But, for my part, the most interesting feature of the book and the one that makes it Leacock Medal worthy lies in the pages that remind us of the value of friendships and how fragile connections can grow into strong Mariposan communities.    Earnest finds his in a support group for people who share names with the famous and struggle under the perceptions these names carry.  So we have a Mario Andretti who can’t drive, a Mahatma Ghandi with a temper, and others with varying degrees of similarities with and differences from their namesakes.

These sub-incongruities make up a funnier whole than the sum of the quirky parts.  

At first, it also seems funny that such a vaguely connected subset of humanity might need a support group.  But our names infiltrate every corner of our lives including the purchase of a coffee and certainly speak to the whole of our experience more than dart-throwing, chess-playing interests that underpin most clubs or associations.

I’m not ready to form an Association of Dicks, but I feel a natural affinity for people with that name as well as people with hyphenated, multi-lingual surnames knowing that they give of their time to spell out the words anytime I.D. is checked or credit cards are used.  I also have empathy for Earnest Hemmingway and his reluctance to abandon the familial banner.

My parents wanted a Daniel – Oh Danny Boy – son.   But before the christening, my mom’s brother, my Uncle Dick, dropped by to see the baby.   When asked about intentions for a name, my dad, always a joker, said “Oh, we think we’ll name him after his Uncle Richard – so he’ll always be – Rich.”

Dick didn’t say much, but heading out to his pickup truck to drive home, he stopped, turned around, and came back into the farm house with moistened eyes to say how touched he was.  My parents had no choice but to follow through with what was intended as humour and christen the baby in Dick’s honour. 

So, I keep Dick as the short form and eschew variations like Rickie, Richie, or Ricardo and try to accept any awkwardness with Earnest Hemmingway –Terry Fallis - No Relation -  sanguinity.

Still, I’m glad that some Starbucks baristas have started asking for initials only.

 DBD

May 2015

Post-script

I had one semi-famous “Earnest Hemmingway” kind of experience.

In the fall of 1985, I was charged with delivering some sensitive documents to the Prime Minister’s Office in the Langevin Block. After checking in at the reception desk, I was told that the PM’s Chief of Staff Mr. Roy wanted to see me. I walked into the big office down the hall, sat down in the chair across from his desk, and waited to hear him speak. He looked up, squinted, looked over at the door, looked back at me, squinted again, and finally said “can I help you?”

I introduced myself, explained why I came to the PMO that day, and said that I was told he wanted to see me. He got up and went out. The receptionist returned to explain that the Chief of Staff thought “Dic Doyle,” the former Globe and Mail Editor and now Senator was in the building. As I left, Mr. Roy, possibly feeling as embarrassed as me, called me back and asked if I would like a couple of tickets to the Grey Cup in Montreal. I watched the B.C. Lions beat Hamilton in the Big O a month later and wondered how I might use this “Dic Doyle” thing again.

 Post-Post Script 

“Hey, maybe you’ll meet him someday,” my wife said. “That should be funny – Dick meet Phallus - Phallus meet Dick.”

“You know it is not spelled that way, don’t you ?” I corrected.

“Don’t be such a dick.”

 Writing Exercise

Write a short story about a Canadian humour writer named Stephen Harper Leacock.

2015 Finalist - Laughing All the Way to the Mosque by Zarqa Nawaz

The Mortar and the Mosque 

Here’s a challenge for Canadian writers: “We need a new metaphor for our country.”

This seemed to be the consensus at the opening of the Contesting Canada's Future conference in Peterborough last week (May 21-23, 2015). None of the old concepts – “the cultural mosaic,”  “the two solitudes,”  “the frosty salad bowl,” “not-a-melting-pot,” “the fur trade folks,” “people living on land stolen from aboriginal people” - seem all that useful in today’s Canada. 

This philosophical discussion spun around my head as I headed back to the Best Western on Lansdowne Street that night, flopped down on the bed, and picked up where I left off reading Laughing All the Way to the Mosque by journalist and screenwriter Zarqa Nawaz.   The book stands out on the 2015 Leacock Medal shortlist as the work of a woman humorist, a story rooted in the Prairies, and a window on a particular element of our hard to describe society.  It kind of speaks to the need for a new national metaphor too.

In the book, Nawaz, the creator of the successful CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie, shares her life through vignettes that rely heavily on dialogue and have the feel of a TV sitcom at times.  Laughing All the Way to the Mosque does what viewers of the TV show might expect.  It documents in a cheerful way the incongruous circumstance of a girl growing up in the Canadian west as the protected product of Pakistani immigrant parents.  The stress of hairy legs in gym class, the allure of tight jeans at Muslim summer camp, the adventure of talking to boys, and teenage rebellion (albeit by being more conservative than her parents) could fit into TV.   

Laughing also covers subjects like “ass washing,” clips and weights to restore the foreskin of circumcised penises, sex rules around the pilgrimage to Mecca, and references to “white people” ways that do not normally make it onto the little screen.   This, of course, all adds to authenticity and avenues to connect with Zarqa’s experience.

But these stories amount to something special because they go beyond the Muslim in Canada fish-out-of-water formula.   They almost equally tell, with charity and humour, the experience of a Westernized, moderate Canadian in the Muslim world.   Her reaction to the Halal butcher’s mix of prayer mats, trinkets, and Frankenstein cow parts could have come from the mouth and mind of any Canadian, and her naiveté in facing conservative backlash to the Little Mosque series comes across as the perspective of someone with one foot in and one foot outside each community.

When she makes her Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, she and her husband view the spectacle as people from the Canadian prairies and are comfortably stationed in the camping area for Canadians.

Through this mix, Nawaz pulls us into her story and allows us to laugh along with her. We recognize how much we all have in common, and there’s something hopeful in the fact that we have a nexus point where we can share the joke.

Often, I saw passages in Laughing All the Way to the Mosque which could have come with little alteration from early Leacock Medalists like Morley Torgov’s avoidance of medical school in the tiny Jewish community in Sault Ste. Marie or Sondra Gotlieb’s pressure to choose between marriage and university in 1950s Winnipeg.   Leacock Medal winner Ian Ferguson’s  life growing up as a “white kid” on an Alberta Indian reserve, and 1948 medal winner Angéline Hango’s life as a French Quebecoise in English schools all had strong similarities, in essence, to experience mapped out in the Nawaz story.

In 1948, it is likely that French Quebec was just as clichéd and “other” as the Muslim community might feel today. (If you ever have a chance, read the jacket cover of the 1940’s Truthfully Yours and then that of Laughing All the Way to the Mosque – I’m not sure publishers and publicists do subtle humorists and affectionate memoirs a favour with hackneyed adjectives like “hilarious” and “laugh-out-loud,” but the shared spin shows how similar the presumptions about the market and context were.)

Of course, misconceptions and the interface of cultures provides great raw material for humour and, perhaps, for finding our way as a country.

That opening session at the Peterborough conference ended with the Chair suggesting, in a joking way, that the metaphor for Canada in the 21^st century should be Hegel’s description of life as “the union of union and disunion.”   

A bit too theoretical for me, but I guess he meant the country consists of the things that hold us together whether there is a natural bond or not.

It’s like the spirit of Canada is the mortar between the tiles in the mosaic, not the individual tiles nor even the whole.   I think you find that mortar in people, like the Canadian race – the Métis -  that bridge different cultures and that teach the rest of us how to smile at the challenges.  People like Ian Ferguson, Angéline Hango, Morley Torgov, and now, in 2015, Zarqa Nawaz.

Writing Exercise

You are the daughter of Canadian parents living in a small village in Morocco. Write a short story describing how you successfully make friends at your new school by starting a hockey pool.

DBD
May 2015

2015 Finalist - A Loose Egg - Robert Wringham

Eric Echo

I don’t usually laugh at Alzheimer’s patients.

But I made an exception a few years ago for Eric Nicol.  I nodded, smiled, and, a few times, snorted laugh-out-loud sounds as I read his final book (Script Tease - A Wordsmith's Waxings on Life and Writing) published after the writer’s 90th birthday and written after he’d received the above diagnosis.  The next year, 2011, Nicol died.   Evidently, death was the only way to put an end to his literary career and his efforts to make me laugh.

His life as a writer and humorist ran over seventy years.  During that period, he piled up 6,000 newspaper columns, pumped out written works of all kinds, and nabbed three Leacock Medals for Humour.  Some commentators suggest his silly style and his focus on everyday life fell out of fashion as post-Watergate political satire and rougher comedy ascended.

But it never fell out of fashion with me, and I have defended Nicol’s work as carrying a message and meaning beyond the surface-level, buying-a-shoe, riding-a-bike and doing-the-laundry subject matter might imply.  Nicol left over thirty books of humour behind, and I have yet to read them all.  He also influenced a generation of Canadian writers, and you can find echoes of Eric in many other books, plays, and columns today.   I do not lack the means to hear his voice.

But I sense the spirit of Eric Nicol most strongly in the writing of one young humorist:  British born Montrealer Robert Wringham, a short-listed finalist for the 2015 Leacock Medal for Humour.

 Wringham’s book, A Loose Egg, cracks me up like few others.   Light and silly, it seems dedicated to no other purpose than to amuse people like me.   Egg is an essay collection that floats over the writer’s life as a boy in Dudley, England where he gloats about his Hungry Hungry Hippo victories on to university days in Glasgow where he and colleagues in the library pass time trying to get the cash register to spit out an unbroken chain.

Married life in Montreal consumes the last part of the book with the anxious account of a loose egg in the refrigerator.   It also describes the procrastination perils of hammock ownership and pastimes like psychic air traffic control of flies.

It all made me laugh, sometimes uncontrollably, and recalled Eric Nicol’s capacity to capture the vapors around what others might label “nothing” and package them in a way that resonates and makes us smile.  Wringham’s tight style does this really, really well, but I admit it is a struggle to find a deeper or more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts meaning to his book.

Recently, I heard award-winning author Miriam Toews say “that when nothing is happening; it still is life” and worth documenting and celebrating.   This might hint at the higher merit of a collection like A Loose Egg though, for me, it’s more than enough that it makes me laugh.

 “I’m a humorist. I lift people’s moods,” Wringham says in comparing his worth to the work of a crane operator.

For such reasons, I was rooting for Wringham in the final phase of the Leacock Medal competition and thought his career needed the boost more than the other finalists. But against the criteria of literary style, I am afraid a more meritorious book may have won.

Nevertheless, you can find something profound in Robert Wringham’s writing.  A profoundly creative take on the world and an imagination that can muse over Mr. Peanut’s monocle and 3-D movies, can mix organ transplants with an egg sandwich, and can intertwine dental hygiene with geo-politics.  His essays are tightly written with a skill that Eric Nicol might have admired even at his prime.

Perhaps, someday Robert will roll up his creativity and skill in a novel or collection with some lofty, integrated objective.  But I hope he puts it off until I turn 90, start showing signs of Alzheimer’s, and have forgotten the sweet, silly, first-time experience of reading his stuff about nothing.  

Writing Exercise

Your hammock breaks on the same day as a new magazine arrives in the mail.  In 500 words, explain how you respond to the crisis.
 

DBD

May 2015