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Reprinted from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, March 28, 1998

Feet firmly planted – Vanderhaeghe remaines regular, humble guy
by James Parker

You would think by now Guy Vanderhaeghe would enter a room with a bit of a swagger.

After all, the Saskatoon author is two-time winner of the Governor-General’s award. His work has received praise from Timothy Findlay, Margaret Atwood and other charter members of the CanLit elite. He has been known to hobnob with legendary novelist Mordecai Richler.

He has arrived. In fact, he arrived a few years back.

But when he arrives at the Windows Restaurant in the Sheraton Cavalier, Vanderhaeghe is the very picture of Saskatchewan self-effacement. Dressed casually, like the academic he almost became, he is polite, quiet and friendly. There are no affectations, no preening self-awareness, none of the arrogant irascibility sometimes attributed to the artistically talented.

He’s a regular guy, the type who goes to work each morning, plays hockey once a week and likes to catch the odd college basketball game on TV.

“I think most people find me incredibly boring for a writer,” Vanderhaeghe confides over lunch.

“I think I lack at least the stereotype of what a writer is. I think part of that comes from living here. Saskatchewan is a bit like Ireland. The Irish have a habit of cutting people down to size. There is something akin to that here. And quite frankly, I’ve always been leery of taking myself too seriously.”

But there are others who take him very seriously indeed.

Earlier this month, Vanderhaeghe was short-listed for the 1998 IMPAC Dublin literary award for his novel, The Englishman’s Boy, which netted him the Governor General’s Award for fiction in 1996 (he also picked up a GG in 1982 for a collection of short stories).

The Dublin award offers a $190,000 prize and the type of publicity that sells books. It also provides a welcome boost in profile for a work that some day may form the basis of a movie. Vanderhaeghe is working on a film adaptation for Minds Eye Pictures of Regina. His dream is to have Robert Duvall cast as Shorty McAdoo, the grizzled cowpoke who ended up as human fodder on movie sets of early Hollywood.

Being the crass sort, I naturally ask if the success of The Englishman’s Boy has left him in a secure financial state. Is he awash in cash? The answer is no.

The book, an entertaining yarn which tells the story of the Cypress Hills massacre of 1870 and links it with a separate tale of Hollywood in the 1920s, has sold about 90,000 copies. An impressive total, but not enough for Freedom 55. Now 46, Vanderhaeghe will likely be writing will into his dotage.

“It (becoming a writer) has been a worrying decision for years because of the insecurity,” he says.

“The sort of things other professions have, you don’t have. Things like pensions, dental plans and drug plans. But I very strongly wanted to go after this. It may have been a very crazy thing to do. It may still be a crazy thing to do. But now I’m 46 years old. I’ve arrived at a point where I can’t turn around and retrace my steps.”

Vanderhaeghe grew up in Esterhazy, an only child who read voraciously and loved to write stories at an early age. At 11 he aspired to be a novelist, but that dream drifted away only to re-emerge when he was a graduate history student at the University of Saskatchewan.

Who were his literary influences?

“Alice Munro had the biggest initial influence because she wrote about small communities much like my hometown. I studied her for things like the structure of the short story and how the short story is written.” Flannery O’Connor, Evelyn Waugh and John Updike are other authors Vanderhaeghe admired in the early days. He continues to enjoy the writing of all three, particularly Updike.

“Nicholas Baker wrote this book called You and I. It’s all about Updike. In it he points out that Updike is the most consistently professional writer working today. Everything measures up in terms of standards and he can do everything.”

Vanderhaeghe considers Updike to be a good exapmle of the man of letters, the writer who works constantly and will try his hand at anything. It is a British tradition best exemplified by the late Anthony Burgess, who said he refused no reasonable offer of work and very few unreasonable ones.

Vanderhaeghe thinks of himself as an author rather than a man of letters. Beyond a few book reviews, he does little writing on the side. He says taking any job that comes along can help keep a novelist immersed in the muck and mire of real life. But it also can lead to sloppiness. Among Canadian writers, he says only Richler can come close to matching Updike for quality output. Recently, the Montreal author could be found musing about hockey in the pages of Esquire magazine.

I ask him about his relationship with Richler, a man famous for his Scotch intake and his ability to infuriate Quebec nationalists, feminists and sundry other people with his frank and politically incorrect comments.

“I’m not a close friend but I do enjoy spending time with Richler. I admire him. He writes serious humor. He doesn’t care what people think about him. He follows his own path. There are positions he takes that I don’t agree with. But I admire his courage.”

Vanderhaeghe could spend more time with Richler and other notables in the Canadian literary community if he moved east. Other writers have asked why he bothers to live in Saskatoon. This town is thousands of kilometres removed from CBC headquarters, the big publishing houses and Adrienne Clarkson. That’s precisely the point.

“I like the solitude of Saskatoon,” he says.

“The larger the city it seems writers spend more time with other writers. I certainly spend time with other writers. But I also spend time with lawyers and teachers. That prevents you from getting too obsessive and inward turned. I take the act of writing very seriously. And I think of it as an art. But I don’t see how that separates me from a carpenter or a mechanic who also want to do the best they can. Saskatoon enables me to keep my feet on the ground.”

read a passage from The Englishman’s Boy
read a review of The Englishman’s Boy
return to Guy Vanderhaeghe