Steven Heighton on his new novel: immersed in story

By John Geddes - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 2:09 PM - 3 Comments

When Yann Martel stepped to the podium in Ottawa for a recent joint reading and on-stage interview with Steven Heighton, he described Heighton as a “man of letters.”

It’s a vaguely musty designation, but the author of Life of Pi and Beatrice & Virgil explained why he thought it fit. Had he himself learned to play an instrument or paint, Martel explained, he might well have expressed his creativity without ever writing; Heighton, on the other hand, he regards as a writer in some more inevitable way.

That rang true to me. I found Heighton’s 2005 novel, Afterlands, about as expertly crafted as any recent work of fiction. (Many agreed: it was a Globe and Mail Best Book and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.) He’s also published polished short stories, essays and poetry. His latest collection of poems, Patient Frame, was released this spring at about the same time as an ambitious new novel, Every Lost Country.

When I met Heighten two years ago at a writers’ festival in Thunder Bay, Ont., I discovered that we share roots in the same Northwestern Ontario mining district, where I spent my entire childhood, and Heighton’s family lived when he was a little boy. As it turns out, he views that bit of backwoods background as relevant to his novels, or at least their far-flung settings.

In Afterlands, he re-imagined the failed Polaris expedition of 1872, turning the story of survival on the Arctic ice into a meditation on nationalism. In Every Lost Country, he takes a real incident from 2006, in which a group of Tibetans trying to flee across the border into Nepal were shot upon by Chinese border guards, as his starting point for a fictional tale in which a Canadian climbing expedition witnesses the incident.

When I spoke with Heighton recently on the phone, I started out asking him about why he subjects his characters to the demands of the Himalayas and the High Arctic. An edited transcript of the conversation:

Q. What is it about these remote, austere places that attracts you as a writer?

A. For one thing, I grew up partly in Red Lake, up in Northern Ontario, so those drastic landscapes have always been part of my life, or at least part of my imagination, because I was there during my formative years. The other thing is that I really like flushing my characters deepest traits to the surface. I want to expose their characters in a raw form. One way to test them and make them do that is to put them in a landscape that’s unfamiliar to them and to readers. They are forced up against themselves.

Q. We live in an era of virtual experiences, though. Do you have that in the back of your mind when you write about such physically intense real ones?

A. I had a book of essays out in 1997 in which I talked about the increasing virtuality of our lives. I’ve always been afraid of that in my own life. Lyrical poets have to be in touch with visceral experience. I’ve always tried to avoid virtual experiences. That’s emerging in my fiction.

Q. Your two most recent novels share more than tough terrain. Even though they take place in different centuries and on different continents, there are thematic links.

A. I actually see Every Lost Country as a sort of sequel to Afterlands. They are both interested in borders and belonging, the idiocy of certain kinds of nationalism and tribalism. And they have the landscape connections, the extremes. So I think they are connected on a lot of levels, even though Afterlands was historical and Every Lost Country is contemporary. I’m feeling like it’s building to a kind of trilogy.

Q. Both books convey a deep distaste for nationalism. On the other hand, the Inuit and the Tibetans are viewed sympathetically. What’s your perspective on the divisions between groups of people?

A. I’m supportive of practical nationalism, like the kind we need in Canada to avoid being absorbed into a much larger country. The kind of nationalism I despise as destructive and infantile is really just tribalism writ large. It’s based on hatred of the other rather than belief in the integrity of your own distinct culture. The world would be much less interesting without distinct cultures.

Q. Certain dividing lines you depict as absurd.

A. There’s a border on the glacier that the Chinese authorities have to come up each month and keep moving, because the glacier keeps carrying the border into China. They reclaim the 30 or 40 feet they’ve lost. Borders may be necessary on some practical level, but on a deeper level they are insane and childish.

Q. How was it different getting at these issues in Every Lost Country, which takes place in present times, after Afterlands, which is set in the 19th century?

A. One difference is the potential for a book like Every Lost Country, even though it’s not polemical, to have a political effect as a collateral benefit. I’m trying to tell a story and develop characters, but if people reading the book get more interested in the predicament of Tibet, I’ll be gratified. If that happens, that’s good. Obviously, that wasn’t the case with Afterlands. If it interested people on a political level, it was more conceptual and philosophical.

Q. The Globe and Mail‘s reviewer compared the way you work in these sorts of big ideas with Joseph Conrad. Do you regard Conrad as a kind of model?

A. I’d say no. I’m just trying to write like myself. Well, I did read most of his books in a very formative time in my life. I guess one of his novels was behind Afterlands, in a sense.

Q. Which one?

A. Nostromo.

Q. I found that one hard going.

A. It’s a great, boring book.

Q. Afterlands wasn’t at all boring, although Every Lost Country is certainly faster paced.

A. Just to go stick with Nostromo, it has a processional, slow movement. I wanted Afterlands to be gripping, but also have a sort of dreamlike density. I wanted to suggest the altered state induced by cold and starvation in these people trying to survive on the ice floe. In Every Lost Country, I wanted the pace to be more febrile. It all takes place over five or six days.

Q. And there’s something about the cast of characters that seems to call for speed.

A. I’ve got a 17-year-old who spends a lot of time texting and on YouTube. I’ve got a 33-year-old Chinese-Canadian filmmaker who’s also hooked into the culture. So I can’t have them in a book that moves in a dense way. Also, I want every novel to be different, and I knew I could create a propulsive narrative here.

Q. Despite those familiar, contemporary references you mention, Every Lost Country is, on one level, an exotic adventure.

A. I’ve been a traveller, but I don’t travel so much now. I’m trying to do it vicariously through my writing. I’m trying to write books that will draw readers away from their lives but send them back in a more awakened way. It’s what I look for in literature. I’m no longer such a purist about literature as I once was. I don’t think it’s a sin to tell a good story, to offer readers that—not escape—that excitement.

Q. Escape isn’t such a bad word. Graham Greene titled one of him memoirs Ways of Escape.

A. Okay, I’m trying to offer readers “ways of escape.” Nice to have a phrase from Graham Greene to steal.

Q. Another escape is entering the mind of a person of the opposite sex. Female characters are at the centre of both Afterlands and Every Lost Country. As a writer, do you find that intimidating, in the sense that you might get it wrong?

A. This is my third novel. Increasingly there’s a danger of going into default mode, cruise control. It’s too easy to write characters about my age, who’ve seen the same films, read the same books, talk in the same idiom. So I need to stretch myself and try new things. One way is to try to get into the minds and solitudes of people very different from me, women especially. It’s difficult. I struggle with it. I have to delve deeper and work harder.

Soon after we spoke, Heighton—evidently uneasy about the way I’d pressed the word “escape” on him—sent this email: “It occurs to me that what I seek from good novels, and try to offer readers, is immersion—the pleasures of complete immersion—rather than escape. The difference between the two terms is very slight, I agree, but somehow I prefer the nuances of immersion.” Like Martel said, he’s a man of letters, and so every word counts.

Stop the lama love-in

By Andy Lamey - Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 11:15 AM - 140 Comments

Everyone loves the Dalai Lama. Just how much was on display two weeks ago when the Tibetan religious leader paid a visit to the town of Tawang in northeastern India. Ethnic Tibetans travelled to the frontier outpost from all over the sub-continent in order to venerate the 74-year-old monk at a huge outdoor rally. “He is our god, he is the living Buddha. A glimpse of the Dalai Lama is like getting spiritual power inside you,” said one participant in explaining the extraordinary adulation the Dalai Lama inspires. Here in Canada, our view is not so different. When the Dalai Lama travelled to Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal last month, tens of thousands crowded into stadiums to hear his message of universal compassion. The rapturous reception was in keeping with our decision in 2006 to grant him citizenship, the highest honour Canada bestows on foreign leaders. The Dalai Lama’s other admirers include the U.S. government, which awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Nobel Peace Prize committee. The general feeling of Lama-mania was summed up by TV star Sandra Oh, who co-hosted one of his Canadian appearances. “He’s a rock star! Rock star! Seriously, a rock star!”

Yet if the Dalai Lama is a rock star, does he live up to the hype? His spiritual teachings contain elements of illogic and intolerance that would not be accepted from any other religious figure. That these go unnoticed is largely due to the way Tibetan Buddhism functions as a spiritual Rorschach blot onto which Westerners project their hopes and desires. The primary problem, however, is political. In addition to being a spiritual figure, the Dalai Lama is the leader of the Free Tibet movement. And when it comes to advancing that goal, he has been a resounding failure. Uncritical adulation legitimizes the Dalai Lama’s failed leadership and undermines one of the great political causes of our time.

It’s not hard to understand the Dalai Lama’s appeal. At first glance he holds out the promise of religious belief purged of any trace of fundamentalism. When it comes to modern science, for example, he has said that when it conflicts with Buddhist teachings, Buddhism should be revised. Other theological statements he has made, such as his declaration that “any deed done with good motivation is a religious act,” bespeak a similarly open-minded temperament.

But this progressive outlook can sometimes turn out to be illusory. Consider the teaching for which he may be best known, his doctrine of universal compassion. As he has written, “non-violence applies not just to human beings, but to all sentient beings—any living thing that has a mind.” That belief is why, when the Dalai Lama was invited to a fundraising luncheon for a monastery in Wisconsin in 2007, the organizers expected him to ask for a vegetarian meal. Instead they watched him happily ingest pheasant and veal. “He pretty much lapped up every single plate that he had put in front of him,” one tablemate later said. “He loves food; he likes good food.” The Dalai Lama, it turns out, is vegetarian at his official residence in India but not while travelling. But a doctrine of compassion that switches on and off depending on geography is not much of a doctrine at all.

The Dalai Lama’s position on same-sex relationships is equally puzzling. “I look at the issue at two levels,” he told the Vancouver Sun in 2004. Homosexuality is perfectly acceptable for non-believers. And for people who look to the Dalai Lama for guidance? “For a Buddhist, the same-sex union is engaging in sexual misconduct.” The double-sided approach is rooted in a traditional method of explaining discrepancies between schools of Buddhism, whereby the Buddha is said to have taught different things to different people. But as with the doctrine of compassion, the Dalai Lama’s considered view ends up being a sloppy relativist mess. Or at least it does in the West, where he is obliged to state his view regarding non-Buddhists. When addressing Buddhists directly the Dalai Lama’s position is less complicated—and more crudely prejudicial.

This side of the Dalai Lama’s spiritual teachings is never subject to criticism. Why? One possibility is that the Dalai Lama solves a specifically Western problem. In the 19th century the shared religious values that once permeated our civilization began a “long withdrawing roar,” as Matthew Arnold put it. Any religion one adopts now is merely one possibility among many, a reality that drains each of its explanatory value and force. An infatuation with the Dalai Lama is the Goldilocks solution for a culture that finds traditional religion too hot and atheism too cold. His exoticism marks him as authentic, and subjecting his teachings to critical scrutiny is beside the point, as there is never any chance we are going to engage his teachings seriously enough to be challenged by them. We instead want to bask in his distant spiritual glow.

The Dalai Lama’s appeal is arguably closely entwined with the peculiar fascination the West has long exhibited for all things Tibetan. When Europeans discovered Tibet, it was a remote kingdom that had never been colonized and still seemed to exist in the ancient past. It quickly became a land of fantasy. Shangri-La, the mystical Tibetan paradise, was first depicted in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton. In the late 1930s the Nazis sent an expedition to Tibet, hoping to find an ancient race of Aryans. After the devastation of the Second World War, European intellectuals imagined Tibet as “an unarmed society.” As Buddhist scholar Donald Lopez notes, these myths have a common source. In each case, “the West perceives some lack within itself and fantasizes that the answer, through a process of projection, is to be found somewhere in the East.”

This process continued after China invaded Tibet in 1959, and many Tibetans were driven into exile. When the Beatles recorded Tomorrow Never Knows, John Lennon wanted his voice to sound like “the Dalai Lama on the mountain top.” Remember the cuddly and eco-friendly Ewoks in Return of the Jedi? The language they spoke was modified Tibetan. Today Tibet is embraced by celebrities ranging from the Beastie Boys to action hero Steven Seagal. “The Dalai Lama gave me a spiritual blessing that would not have been given to anyone who was not special,” Seagal announced in 1996. “I don’t think he has given such a blessing to another white person.”
Just how special Seagal is became clear in 1997 when Tibetan religious authority Penor Rinpoche declared him to be the reincarnation of a 17th-century lama. However ridiculous it may seem to imagine the star of Exit Wounds and Pistol Whipped as a holy being, Seagal’s anointment symbolizes the transformation Tibetan Buddhism has undergone as it has come in contact with new patrons and admirers in the West. Rather than something “out there,” Tibetan culture is influenced by how Westerners engage with it.

Unfortunately, on a political level, that influence has been highly negative. Seeing how requires understanding the different and at times conflicting roles the Dalai Lama now plays in addition to being the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism. Nowhere is this more true than in regard to his position as leader of the Tibetan government in exile, and the Free Tibet movement more broadly.

Since China invaded Tibet it has engaged in a campaign of ruthless repression. It is official government policy to “end the nomadic way of life” of traditional Tibetans and to forcibly resettle them. Tibetans who protest are subject to show trials and torture. Opposing China’s actions has rightly been characterized as a moral struggle on the scale of the movement against apartheid or for Indian independence. Unfortunately, the Dalai Lama is the equal of neither Nelson Mandela nor Gandhi. He is as miscast as the head of Tibet liberation as the pope would have been leading the struggle against Hitler. Under his leadership political goals have inevitably taken a back seat to spiritual ones.

A comparison to South Africa is instructive. One of the most inspiring moments in the struggle against apartheid came during the famous Rivonia trial when Nelson Mandela, faced with a possible death sentence, spoke from the prisoner’s dock. Freedom, he said, was “an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Mandela’s speech galvanized the anti-apartheid movement. The Dalai Lama’s pronouncements, by contrast, could not be less defiant. “I practise certain mental exercises which promote love toward all sentient beings, including especially my so-called enemies.” Mandela endorsed an international boycott of South African athletes. When China hosted the 2008 Olympics, the Dalai Lama sent Beijing his regards. “I send my prayers and good wishes for the success of the event.” If the Dalai Lama had led the struggle in South Africa, apartheid would still be in effect. Unsurprisingly, 50 years after the occupation, Tibet is still not free.

At times it seems that is what Western Tibetophiles would unknowingly prefer. In the words of actor Richard Gere, a long-time advocate of Tibetan independence, “Many of us constantly remind our Tibetan friends, ‘You must maintain that sense of uniqueness and that genuine cultural commitment to non-violence. If you pick up arms and become like the Palestinians, you’ll lose your special status.’”

Leave aside the fact that the moral case for armed resistance in Tibet is as strong as it was in France under German occupation. There are many steps an independence movement can take that fall short of violence, measures such as strikes or boycotts. The Dalai Lama has thrown himself into none of these, which are all at odds with loving one’s enemy. This approach is reinforced by his Western admirers, who are drawn to the myth of Tibet as an unarmed society (even though Tibet has fought armies from Mongolia, Nepal and Britain). The overall effect of his staunchest Western fans therefore has been to reward and perpetuate an approach to Tibetan independence that has no hope of ever succeeding.

To be fair, his Holiness has begun to admit as much. “I have to accept failure; things are not improving in Tibet,” he said last November, acknowledging the “death sentence” Tibetans continue to face under Chinese rule. His supporters stress the awareness he brings to the Tibetan cause and the anger Chinese officials express whenever the Dalai Lama receives an audience with a Western leader. But after a certain point, awareness has to give way to action.

Slowly, another political faction is taking form. As one young Tibetan who has spent his entire life in exile in India said in March, “We do not get anything from China. So some young people want to go to a little bit of violence—not to kill anyone but to do something so that China knows they will actively [resist].” Such a view is in keeping with the position of the Tibetan Youth Congress, which stands for “the total independence of Tibet even at the cost of one’s life.” If progress is to ever be made on Tibet, these approaches need to be taken seriously. But that can only happen if the Dalai Lama steps aside as a political leader, and lets a new generation take over.

First, however, public perception of the Dalai Lama needs to change. As it stands, when people turn their attention to him, they do so in the spirit of answering John Lennon’s call to “turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.” The outcome of this lazy attitude is to reinforce the Dalai Lama’s leadership and his counterproductive efforts to free his people. The basic problem was summed up by the Dalai Lama himself when he stated, “I find no contradiction at all between politics and religion.” So long as the Dalai Lama is regarded as a figure of both spiritual and political liberation, his efforts to make the first goal happen will ensure the second never does.

Tibet Rally on Hill: MPs, an athlete and serious nails

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 2:38 AM - 0 Comments

A large gathering of Tibetans and their supporters arrived on Parliament Hill to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Tibetans revolt against China’s invasion that resulted in the Dalai Lama fleeing to India into exile.

Former National rower David Kay spoke at the rally. He decided to cycle across Canada in an attempt to raise awareness about Tibet before the Olympics in Beijing last summer. He was upset more athletes did not speak up about China’s spotty human rights record.

Other speakers included Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.

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Megapundit: The Star hearts Obama

By selley - Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 3:16 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Doug Saunders in Belgrade; Graham Thomson on literacy-for-food in Afghanistan.

Obamamania
The Toronto Star executes a collective swoon for the Democratic nominee.

Barack Obama’s call for 10,000 more American troops in Afghanistan “is not a long-term solution,” and “is less likely to work there than in Iraq.” His position that “he’d bomb Pakistani hideouts of the Taliban is a recipe for igniting more anti-Americanism in Pakistan.” And his belief in an “undivided” Israeli Jerusalem bucks an international trend towards a more “even-handed” approach to the Palestinian conflict. Can you tell this is a love letter from Haroon Siddiqui to Obama? No, really, it is. “Rarely has an American presidential candidate walked taller abroad than he,” he gushes. “He’s coming across as president-presumptive, and already setting the tone and direction of U.S. foreign policy.”

That’s bad news for Stephen Harper, James Travers opines, because he partakes of the same “policy bundle” as George W. Bush, which Obama is totally repudiating. What exactly are those shared policies? Well, lessee here. “A disastrous Iraq war, an economy sagging under debt load as well as the subprime burden”? Um, no, no and no. “Unilateral interventions and democracy exported at gunpoint”? No, and no. “Family values, tax cuts, law and order, and the military as patriotism’s principal vector”? Somebody call us, please, when Obama comes out against any of the first three—and wasn’t there something about 10,000 more troops for Afghanistan? This line of argument has always been a stretch, we think. Obama quite naturally whets the appetite for an inspirational, “inclusive” leader, but until one installs him or herself atop the Liberal party, we don’t see how that’s going to directly impact Harper’s fortunes.

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tibetology/Iyerology

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 11:03 AM - 0 Comments

I’m interviewing Pico Iyer tomorrow about his new book on the Dalai Lama. One problem: I basically know squat about Tibet, especially the circumstances surrounding the events that led to the DL’s exile in 1959. Can anyone point me to — or better, send me — something I can read tonight that will give me enough background so I can fake it.

Or, even betterer: Anyone got any suggestions for questions I should ask?

The book is ok, though Iyer persists in the type of analysis he’s been doing for ages. He begins by saying that the West has always projected its deepest aspirations and longings onto Tibet, and that’s wrong. Then he goes and more or less repeats all the usual stereotypes about Tibet.

It’s the same trick he pulled back when he was all keen on Canada as the posterchild of postmodern globalisation. He’d start by repeating McLuhan’s line about everyone always treating Canada as some tabula rasa of the modern identity and say, that’s wrong; then he would proceed to do so.

Canada—Stagflating towards the poorhouse since 2008

By selley - Monday, April 28, 2008 at 1:58 PM - 0 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Doug Saunders on “re-Talibanization”; Scott Taylor on Rick Hillier’s successor; James Travers on our crumbling democracy; David Olive and George Jonas on air travel; Greg Weston on the in-and-out.

Law and Order: Canadian Criminal Intent
In which rowdy hockey fans put cops to the test, star chambers impose human rights orthodoxy on unsuspecting Christians and the Supreme Court vows to keep dogs out of our backpacks. Continue…