Vancouver Writers Festival, Oct. 16-21 at various venues on Granville Island. Info: writersfest.bc.ca/.
"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
-Mark Twain
THE 2012 Vancouver Writers Fest delves into the legacy of Canadian fiction, a dispute between the editor and the edited, and the struggle to find the right words and the lightning that sometimes comes with them.
One of the festival's most intriguing events explores the literary impasse that struck between Raymond Carver and his editor, Gordon Lish.
"I'll tell you the truth, my very sanity is on the line here," Carver wrote to Lish.
The fiction writer, perhaps best known for spare prose that seemed to leave as much unsaid as said, was struggling with both his newfound sobriety and the dramatic changes Lish had wreaked on his work.
The dispute between Lish and Carver cooled but never quite resolved, and the heavily edited stories ultimately formed the collection: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
The idea of revisiting the disagreement that may have severed what had been a very fruitful relationship intrigued Hal Wake, the director of the festival.
"The idea started three or four years ago when there was a series in the New Yorker that talked about Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher, wanting to publish the stories in their original form and getting some resistance from the copyright holder of the stories," Wake says.
Carver's letters to Lish seem to communicate respect love, and desperation.
"They are amongst the most anguished, touching letters you can imagine reading," Wake says. "Carver was a recovering alcoholic who knew that Lish had done a great deal to establish him as one of the pre-eminent writers in the U.S. On the other hand, he felt that Lish was going too far and that the integrity of his work was being compromised."
Lish reworked the endings of 14 of Carver's stories and cut as much as 70 per cent of the prose in some cases. He also changed the titled of ten of the stories.
This year, Wake has invited Gallagher, a poet in her own right, to share Carver's original work with the festival audience.
"We will read ends of the stories as they were published and then the end of the story that was originally written by Carver," Wake says. "I'll be talking to Tess and it's stuff I have wanted to explore for years."
Wake speaks, slowly, softly, and with a precision befitting a lover of the printed word as he discusses taking over the celebration of ink and pulp.
"It was a little bit like moving into a fabulous house that has really good foundations, a new roof, the mortgage is paid off," he says.
Wake has an extensive background in radio, formerly serving as producer on CBC's Morningside. He says that experience was valuable in taking the reins of the writers festival.
"My background in radio was as a programmer. I was always putting together conversations and interviews and so that's something I focused on at the festival is to kind of curate discussions to bring together writers with interesting perspectives on a variety of issues," he says.
One of this year's most interesting perspectives may be supplied by Chan Koonchung, a Beijing writer whose book, The Fat Years, satirically documents a month that has been deleted from the memory of Chinese people.
"We don't often get that kind of insight into the work of a creative artist in China," Wake says. "His book is officially banned in China and yet millions of people have read it because it's been passed around in digital form and it's published in many countries around the world."
Despite the closure of several Vancouver bookstores in recent years, enthusiasm for the fest remains high, according to Wake.
"I think the more technology allows us to do things by ourselves in front a computer monitor, the more there seems to be an impulse for people to get together and to share an experience in some kind of group atmosphere," he says. "Books are ideas, and there still seems to be a voracious appetite amongst people to sink their teeth into a new idea, and to use books in conversation . . . as a way to explore the world."
This year's festival features 77 different events, including a retrospective on the work of Dennis Lee, a poet and children's author who is perhaps best known as a lyricist for Fraggle Rock, an examination of Canadian literature with Margaret Atwood titled Beyond Survival, and a discussion on the environment titled: The State and Fate of This Small Blue Planet with David Suzuki and Australian climate commissioner Tim Flannery.
The diversity of events is fitting, given Wake's eclectic tastes, which stem from a childhood spent reading Little Women and Spider-Man comics with equal enthusiasm.
"It probably is the most curious, strange blend of books that you would ever imagine," he recollects.
Over the years, the festival has attracted literary luminaries like Salman Rushdie, P.D. James, J.K. Rowling, Peter Carey, and Michael Ondaatje.
"My great failure is Marilynne Robinson, whom I've been trying to get for years and years and years and I just haven't managed to break through," Wake says.
The festival is intended to be an examination as well as a celebration of written stories, as well as a search for the unexpected.
"One of the great experiences . . . is when a book kind of jumps up and slaps you across the face with its originality, with its daring, depth."
For more information visit writersfest.bc.ca.
