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