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Writer’s Block: Guy Vanderhaeghe
In his new book of nonfiction Because Somebody Asked Me To (Thistledown Press), Guy Vanderhaeghe recounts moments from his forty-year writing career—including the challenges of crafting fiction and growing up on the prairies—giving readers a glimpse into how his beginnings shaped him as an author and his generation of fiction writers.
Today, Guy answers five rapid-fire questions about a momentous writerly moment, influences, and books.
Photo of Guy Vanderhaeghe is by David Stobbe.
All Lit Up: What was your most rewarding moment as a writer?
Guy Vanderhaeghe: My most rewarding moment as a writer was receiving the phone call from Macmillan of Canada telling me that they were going to publish my first collection of short stories, Man Descending. After years of work, struggle, and rejection, I felt it had all been worthwhile, that I hadn’t spent years deluding myself that I was a writer.
ALU: Which writers have influenced you or had the most impact on your own writing?
GV: The writers who had the most impact on my own writing were those Canadian writers from whom I learned how to write my place and my time: Mordecai Richler, Timothy Findley, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Alistair MacLeod, and Robert Kroetsch. I could name many others, but this is a representative sample.
ALU: What do you enjoy reading?
GV: I particularly like reading literary fiction in translation; it provides me with the illusion I am participating in a global literary culture. Although my grasp of the language isn’t particularly good, I also attempt to read novels in French.
ALU: Do you have a book that you’ve gone back to many times?
GV: There are many books that I have reread many times. The one that has called me back most frequently is Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, a crime story that achieves a profundity and compulsive readability that sets a standard for writers to aspire to.
ALU: What’s the toughest part of being a writer?
GV: Earning enough money to keep writing is the toughest part of being a writer.
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About Because Somebody Asked Me To
Canadian literary great Guy Vanderhaeghe’s eclectic and wryly insightful collection of nonfiction pieces spans his forty-year writing career.
Many editors and publishers over the years have asked Guy Vanderhaeghe for his thoughts on books and writers, on history, literature, and his own specialty, the historical novel. Because Somebody Asked Me To has all the hallmarks of the author’s fiction: it is intelligent, wise, wry, and a pleasure to read. These essays, reviews and occasional pieces are about the difficult craft of fiction, about growing up on the prairies, and about the struggle to find his own voice as a writer, as well as about novels by writers he deeply admires. And, throughout, he casts a bemused eye on the entire human comedy.
In 1982, when Guy Vanderhaeghe’s first book appeared, Canadian literature was beginning to be recognized at home and abroad as culturally engaging and significant. Because Somebody Asked Me To gives readers a glimpse into those beginnings and how they shaped the author and his generation of fiction writers. The book also examines how the Canadian literary scene has shifted during the course of his career — the economic, societal, and cultural changes that have made the old world of writing and publishing scarcely recognizable. Because Somebody Asked Me To invites readers to ponder the transformations Canadian writing has undergone, where it is now, and where it might go from here.
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Guy Vanderhaeghe is a three-time winner of the Governor’s General Award for English language fiction for his collections of short stories, Man Descending and Daddy Lenin, and for his novel, The Englishman’s Boy, which was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize and The International Dublin Literary Award. His novel, The Last Crossing, was a winner of the CBC’s Canada Reads Competition. August into Winter, his most recent novel, won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction and the Glengarry Book Award and was shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Atwood Gibson Fiction Prize. He has also received the Timothy Findley Prize, the Harbourfront Literary Prize, and the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Prize, all given for a body of work.
