Interviewed by Mandy Bayrami
ALL LIT UP: Where did the idea for Your Breath in Charcoal begin?
NICHOLAS HERRING: The bigger ideas in the book (work and friendship and madness—love, too) have been kicking around in my head for a long, long time. When I started the project, I had another working title and I was thinking it would be a story about a village. After a couple of weeks of exploring, and whatnot, I thought, well, no, this seems to be about something else. So, I changed tack a wee bit and started off down that path. After a few more weeks of writing every day I understood that the book was really about this one fellow trying to navigate work and life and adventure and art.
ALU: This is a very ’90s book with some great Canadian pop cultural references, especially musical ones. (Alanis remains one of the greats!). What made you want to look back at that specific decade for this story?
NICHOLAS: I wanted to write about life as I sort of dimly recall experiencing it. A world where people still used landlines to communicate. There’s no internet. 9/11 hasn’t happened. A time when the world felt slightly more cohesive (but perhaps this an idealizing of the past), when we all still had a bit more goodwill and patience and time to talk to one another.
ALU: Did you listen to a lot of ’90s music while you were writing to keep yourself in that specific headspace? If so, what did you listen to?
NICHOLAS: No, I didn’t listen to any music while writing. I prefer silence. Years ago, when I started out writing, I’d listen to music while I wrote, but now I’ve become addicted to silence. Just me and my crappy laptop, and my thoughts. As I wrote the book I tried to recall what kinds of tunes stayed with me from the ’90s. My brother had that first Amanda Marshall record in his rig. I loved that one a lot. Just a great batch of tunes. Alanis, too, as you mentioned earlier. That first record of hers was insanely big at the time. For about two years, there (so, 1995 to 1997), if you listened to the radio or had a brother who had a highly regrettable Columbia House addiction, you were hearing Jagged Little Pill. The guys in the book aren’t too, too concerned with listening to stuff that was “cool.” I wanted the music in the book, the way these guys experience it, to be democratic. That Alannah Myles album, too, which I got at the Second Time Around up in Souris. These women were beautiful and talented and beguiling, and so, I was trying to capture that, as well. My mum had that Capercaillie tape Delirium and I loved it. (Still do.) The one with Karen Matheson on the cover and she kind of looks like a witch or a faerie, or something. What an incredible voice! All of their stuff is great. I’m pretty sure my mum was the only person in the country with a Capercaillie record collection. (My mum was from Scotland.) Anyway, I could go on ad nauseam.
ALU: Knickle is a highly quotable character. How did you find his specific voice?
NICHOLAS: The voice was the first thing to come, and so, I was really lucky in this regard. I had the opening line of the book from the beginning. So, the first bit of the writing process involved really trying to lock down who this voice belonged to. Knickle, the narrator, is a working-class fellow, with a big chip on his shoulder and an openness to him. He’s a seeker (like the Dolly Parton song). He loves being outside and working with his hands and he loves art. He’s slippery, too—one of those fellows who is never really seen because he never draws too much attention to himself.
ALU: Knickle’s road trip to Toronto starts with him driving to New Brunswick to pick up Earn from a psychiatric hospital. Their dynamic is so fun to read and is also deeply moving at times. What did you want to explore about how men navigate intimacy, friendship, and shared struggles with mental health in a world where men are usually expected to tough it out?
NICHOLAS: Well, I wanted to explore all of that stuff. Back when I was growing up, my sense of the prevailing attitude regarding mental health stuff is that, male or female, if a person was sick, although it was never said explicitly, they were somehow insufficient, certainly weak. People talked about the afflicted, if you will, when they weren’t around, and in hushed tones. But the thing is, everybody I came into contact with, especially in the trades, seemed to have really poor mental health. Some fellows would lean into this, and perform the hell out of it (and you and everybody else would just say, well, that’s so-and-so, and he’s just a character, or he’s crazy, watch out), and others would just quietly suffer, try to avoid getting picked on. Looking back, there was such bravado and machismo (and don’t get me wrong, there still is), and people are so tough on one another. I don’t really understand it. It’s hard work, don’t get me wrong, and it certainly takes a toll on a person (both mentally and physically). It’s dirty and not very glamorous, and all of the infrastructure in this country is built by people (mostly) performing as best they can in such circumstances. There’s really not much in the way of positivity or encouragement. I don’t think I’ve ever had a foreman tell me that I did a good job. And if he did tell me, hey, buddy, good job, I’d probably think there’s something wrong with him. Best to avoid him. The younger guys are more open about this stuff (or so it seems to me), but mostly in an ironic way. They understand that you have to just suck it up and be a man, and they’ll say stuff like this out loud (you’ve got to bury your feelings man), but again, mostly in a kind of taking-the-piss manner.
ALU: Your Breath in Charcoal is so funny (I literally laughed out loud many times throughout), but it also delivers on deeply moving moments where Knickle really puts into words some profound experiences. And often the passages swing from both ends in a very skillful way, so it doesn’t feel jarring. How do you balance the funny and tender moments?
NICHOLAS: I’m not really sure, to be honest. I think I kind of stumbled across this style in my previous novel, and then, with this one, I just doubled-down on this aspect. I was trying to explain it at an event earlier this month in Charlottetown, and I think I said that the style is kind of philosophical and stupid, or maybe it was stupidly philosophical. You see, I can’t even really remember how that went! The stupid and the profound just kind of sums me up as a person, I think. That might make a good title for my memoir: The Stupid and the Profound: A Life of Nicholas Herring.
ALU: Working-class life and manual labour are a large part of the novel. Knickle’s world felt very lived in with a lot of specific details around construction-site dynamics and even the physical aspects of labour. What did you want to capture about working-class life through this part of the story?
NICHOLAS: Well, they say write what you know. So, I thought, well, I know this stuff pretty decently because I lived it, so I’ll just write about work, about rodbusting. (I’ve never read a book in which rodbusting features in any way, shape, or form.) I was probably thinking, too, that if I got it down in an ethnographic way, but also in a kind of entertaining way, too, that these experiences would feel more meaningful to me in that they served some greater purpose, that I was able to make art out of work and suffering and what mostly felt to me like meaningless. I guess that’s really the main goal of any artist: to make something out of reality that transcends its reality.
ALU: Your first book, Some Hellish, won the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2022. What sorts of things did you learn from writing your debut that you took into writing your sophomore novel?
NICHOLAS: Well, with all of that award stuff I certainly learned the most I’d ever learned before in the most concentrated way possible. It was definitely an education. I probably learned that it was okay to have a bit of confidence in myself. I don’t consider myself too good at most things, but I know how to write. I hope that one day I can become a master of the trade and maybe even find a way to live solely off of my words and ideas. That’s the goal, anyway.
ALU: What books have you read lately that you can’t stop thinking about?
NICHOLAS: I’ve been thinking a lot about Mazurka for Two Dead Men by Camilo José Cela. This one is a bit of a reread, but it’s hitting much harder the second time around. It’s mad and disorienting, and then you find your way into the current of the river, so to speak, and you find yourself being mad, too, I guess. I read a lot of George Mackay Brown last year. His stories are so good. He has one called “The Story of Jorkel Hayforks” (from Simple Fire) and its dazzling. (Chef’s kiss.)
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NICHOLAS HERRING’s head-spinning debut novel, Some Hellish, won the prestigious Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Critics described it as “heart-wrenchingly beautiful,” “irreverent, screwball, and inspired,” and “a winding, raucous ride.” His writing has also appeared in The Puritan and The Fiddlehead. Herring graduated from St. Jerome’s University with an honours degree in English literature and completed an MA in creative writing at the University of Toronto. He lives in Murray Harbour, Prince Edward Island, where he works as a fisherman and carpenter. Your Breath in Charcoal is his second novel.
Find a copy of Your Breath in Charcoal here on All Lit Up or via your local bookseller.
