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[laughter]
Eleanor Wachtel: No.
Michael Ondaatje: You could have had over a thousand by now.
EW: No. For the longest time, I didn't know what I wanted to be either. And if you're...
Also during that period between crawling down the hallway and German measles, I think during
that period I also was watching a lot of television. There was a... I was around eight, nine, 10,
11 years old; thought TV was great and there were like four channels. I could tell you
what was on any time of day or night on any of those channels. And I also liked comic
books. So, I sort of hold myself up as a bad example.
MO: You don't seem like a comic book person to me. Maybe I'm completely wrong or being
a bit judgemental, I don't know.
EW: Well, my brother had comics and we would use... The way you got to read other comics
was you'd trade them, and so that's how we got to read a lot of comics. Yeah, and I like
comics. Much more recently, I've come to really find fascinating and very engaging graphic
novels and particularly graphic memoirs. There's been such a boom in recent years, and it's
so interesting. I mean, I don't necessarily relate it to my comic book period.
MO: So, were you a loquacious kid or shy? Or neither?
EW: Well, I was sort of both. It's interesting because I'm told I was very loquacious. I
don't remember it all that well, but one of my grandmothers thought I should be a lawyer
because I liked to talk a lot or I think I liked to argue a lot. I wasn't really that
obedient, and so that's where the loquaciousness came in. But there was a period a bit later
on actually, more toward around university, when I got acutely terrified of doing anything
in public, and public could mean speaking at a seminar.
MO: Yeah.
EW: I don't know what caused that. It was a very strange phenomenon. I've actually just
been reading about Renee Fleming, and she describes going through a period in her life
when she had terrible periods of... What do you call it when you're like... She went through
terrible periods of stage fright. See, now that's called the pick-up so when we edit
it, I won't have gotten the word from you. So, I'll just do that once more.
[laughter]
MO: You've got prompters all over the hall.
EW: Oh, that's it. I need them. That's the thing. I was just reading about Renee Fleming
in a memoir of hers, and she talks about how she was singing all over the place and then
she went through this terrible period of stage fright, not that my situation is in any way
comparable. She also actually spent some time living in a railway apartment in New York.
[laughter]
MO: As you did.
EW: And as Marie Forrester did, so maybe I should have been an opera singer.
[laughter]
MO: Now, the Montreal is known for its literary culture; Richler, Nicole Brossard, Hugh MacLennan,
etcetera. And that's where you grew up. What was the Montreal of your youth like?
EW: It was very separated Anglo-Franco. We knew about Hugh MacLennan. I knew that he
taught at McGill. And we knew about Mordecai Richler because everybody was angry with him.
[laughter] And Irving Layton's poetry was the first living poet who in high school that
I knew about. And actually, I should add, another formative influence, alongside my
siblings, was high school. I went to a high school that was part of the public school
board. It had a reputation for, I believe, the highest number of *** pregnancies.
[laughter]
EW: But it was also streamed, and I was in what was called Latin and Science. I don't
know what that really meant except that I took Physics instead of North American Literature,
so I actually had a very late introduction to Canadian fiction. But my high school students,
there was a very strong peer group of very bright kids and it was through them that I
was introduced to classical music, to Russian fiction, to reading, and to books. In addition
to this sort of... That's when I graduated from Sue Barton to actually reading something
more worthwhile. When I talked about lead scholarships in high school, what you got
was a book token which was worth $5 or $10 at a Classics Book Store, which was an independent
book store in Montreal, and for $5 or $10, you could get a lot of paperbacks in those
days. I remember asking an older friend to accompany me to choose what books, and I remember
Carson McCullers' "The Member of the Wedding" and Nikos Kazantzakis' "The Last Temptation
of Christ" and bringing home these paperbacks, and they were the first books that I actually
chose and owned.
MO: Roughly what age is this?
EW: High school. 13, 14, 15, 16.
MO: Somewhere you talk about reading and books being a passion and a solace for you. Could
you tell us more about that?
EW: It sounds sort of grand. I'm sure I said that, but it sounds a little bit grand when
I hear it now. I think it was more that reading was company. Reading has always been good
company. I never leave home without a book. If I have to wait in line anywhere or do anything,
I'm extremely impatient except if I have something to read in which case I can just be happy.
I remember reading Jane Gardam's book recently, the sequel to...
MO: "The Man with a Wooden Hat".
EW: "The Man with a Wooden Hat". Thank you. The sequel to "Old Filth." I was stuck in
an airport, and it was Christmas, and the flight delays and everything was the typical
mess. I was totally absorbed in that book, and it didn't matter what happened as long
as I could turn the page.
MO: Perhaps you have answered this already, but all writers... Well, all adults really
have some person in their youth that was a key influence. Was there one person for you
who was that influence?
EW: Not really. I would think it was more the collective influence of my high school
class. And we did have a very good English teacher in eighth and ninth grade, David Thomas,
who was Welsh, and he didn't really follow the curriculum. I guess, you didn't have to
or it wasn't that strict, so that he introduced... I remember we read "Wuthering Heights" when
I was 13, "Pickwick Papers," some Charles Dickens and Shakespeare. He'd have us read
Shakespeare plays in class. But I didn't have a special relationship. I mean, I'm not a
writer. I think writers have these kinds of special encouragements more than the readers.
MO: Did you want to be a writer?
EW: No. I subscribe to the obsession theory of creativity. I really do. Rilke's advice
to the young poet; Do anything if you... Dig ditches or do anything if you don't have to
be a writer, if you don't have to be a poet. I shouldn't tell you that, but... [laughter]
And, so, I really think you do it because you're driven to do it. It's so hard, and
it's so hard to do well. I mean, I've written fiction, and I've done journalism, and so
on, but I've never been driven to write fiction. I feel relieved, if anything.
MO: So, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
EW: I didn't know, and I... Initially, it didn't bother me. I sort of knew what I didn't
want to be. I knew I didn't want to be a teacher, and then I realized later on that I didn't
want to be a university professor. As a kid in primary school, I'd see what the teachers
were doing. I knew that isn't what I wanted to do. And I didn't have any idea. And it
troubled me for a long time. I think of myself as a late starter. When I look back now, it
doesn't seem like it was that late, but at the time, I didn't really know.
MO: So, jump now a bit and tell us how you got into radio. How did that begin? How did
that part of your life begin?
EW: Well, I... Just gonna take some water.
[pause]
EW: I was moving to Vancouver, and I was thinking I was going to do something in magazine journalism
because I wasn't really interested in hard news, following the politician, prescribed
newspaper work, but I was interested in writing, and I thought I'd do magazine journalism.
And when I moved to Vancouver, I went around to the magazines. There were a few small magazines,
and they didn't have jobs. You could freelance. Then, I heard that there was a job at CBC
Radio on the morning show as a producer. So, I went down and it turned out that the job
was already filled, that they already had someone in mind for that position, but I could
freelance.
EW: So, I thought, "Okay, that's what I'll have to do." And in order to freelance for
the morning show, you had to do something that the regular host couldn't do. Something
quirky, I think, is how they did it. And, so, I had a list of ideas, and I had a little
tape recorder and a microphone which weren't very good, but I went out with that. I had
a list of ideas, I showed it to the producer and then he ticked off a few of them. And
then I went out, and the first thing I did was interview a Mexican mime who was performing
at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
[laughter]