Richard B. Wright: Writer and Storyteller

By Jon Eben Field

On a brisk and windy afternoon in St. Catharines, Richard B. Wright met me at a coffee shop downtown to talk about writing. I have to admit that it was nice to hear someone like Wright say, “I hate that first page. I don't even show it to my wife,” as he has written 12 novels, won the Trillium, Giller and Governor General's awards and continues to receive critical accolades. Wright is a storyteller who crafts his novels by exploring and illuminating the quotidian details, moods and life-events that surround his characters

Although Wright's most recent novel, Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard, explores the possibility of the bard having a bastard child in Elizabethan England, the book sustains itself through examining the lives and stories of fully realized, believable and interestingly ordinary characters, fabled ancestry notwithstanding. Through memories recounted by Arlene, also known as Linny, the presumptive bastard daughter, we see the harshness and brutality of the time juxtaposed with the beauty of her father's plays. As the narrative flows through the novel, Linny tells Charlotte, her young amanuensis, not only the story of her mother's life of magic and fairies in rural England prior to her dalliance with Shakespeare, but also of Linny's own long life in service and her sole encounter with her famous father.

When asked how he creates the living quality of his writing, Wright quickly intimates that it is a gift. He elaborates, “All my novels are character-based, they're not heavily plotted and so it's very important for me to reach a level where I feel authenticity to the voice which will convince the reader to read on.” By creating the character's voice Wright develops an “intimacy and psychological reality” that invokes “engagement rather than distraction.” But what allows a writer to create an engaging connection through a character? Wright believes there is something in his DNA, along with having an empathic side and being a good listener and observer, that enables him as a writer to connect. But ultimately, he says, “you have to be able to place yourself in another's shoes.” It is the quality of empathy that evokes the sense of deeply understanding the emotions and passions of another human, and for Wright, “Being empathetic is wanting to tell the story of somebody without all the pity. To see them, warts and all, as they are.” So perhaps what makes Wright's novels so fascinating is his willingness to display humanity through them.

A large part of Wright's craft is about knowing when to pursue a story. As he points out, “You tell the story to yourself before you can fashion it for other people, so it's intuition, gut feeling, instinct,” but the real gauge is, “if you're getting bored with it, you know damn well the reader is going to be bored.” Part of what I enjoyed about speaking to Wright was his pragmatic understanding that writing is a solitary practice that requires both diligence and persistence. “You're always groping when you are writing a book,” he points out; although writing can be romanticized as a frenzy of inspired creation, the reality is less glamorous because “editing is the most important thing.” For Wright, the work of a writer is going to “come through in the language.” Writers distinguish themselves, for better or worse, through how they generate a particular scene, point-of-view, character or narrative voice. As Wright succinctly puts it: “It's not the what of a book, it's the how,” and his novels are lauded because of the distinctive narrative voices that emerge, whether from the 1930s, the 1970s or the 16th and 17th centuries.

Although Wright describes himself as impatient by nature, it is primarily with things. He told me about how his mother once threw a package of bacon across the room because she couldn't open it. At the time, he was dumbfounded, but now he is more sympathetic to her frustration. Wright proudly told me that he still writes on an electronic typewriter, “not on a screen.” His empathy and ability to listen means, “When it comes to people, I am not so impatient,” but when writing, “I still have to stop and remind myself to not be impatient, to let my imagination tell me,” because “sooner or later, the language will follow.” Wright has connected with a particularly dynamic, vast and evocative linguistic current, as each of his novels develops a distinct language, tone and world, which call the characters and their multifaceted lives into being, while also displaying his considerable talent for empathy and imagination. If you have not already done so, go and read his first novel, The Weekend Man, and then read his 2003 prize-winning novel, Clara Callan, to get a sense of his range. Very quickly you'll discover the presence of a subtle and powerful author who excels at realizing wide gradients of moral understanding, conjuring mature and vivid worlds, and breathing life into characters who have unmistakable voices.

Wright offered me the following formula: “Language + sensibility + imagination = a writer.” These are wise words, and because Wright is a storyteller, he thinks in a narrative mode and believes that “you have to see life as a story to be a writer.” While talking, he has slipped small stories into his responses, some from his life, others from his novels, and each instance has provided interesting cross-conversation resonances. Wright remembers summer evenings when he was ten or eleven years of age where “there would be four or five of us, and we'd be going home and dusk would be coming on and they'd say, 'How about a story?' And we'd sit on a lawn somewhere and I'd tell these kids stories.” A twilit sky, evening birdsong and the smell of cut grass seemed to drift through the room as I listened. Writers help us to see far and near, the remarkably present and the forever impossible, all the while opening up our imaginations and enclosing worlds in words. They do this in stories to entertain and engage us, but also because they find themselves having to do so. Writers make things up, according to Wright, “because the story demands it and we should be loyal to something more exalted than mere facts.”

Jon Eben Field lives in St. Catharines, Ontario and works as a writer and editor. He has published work in The National Post, PRISM international, and was recently shortlisted for the Malahat Review's Open Season Creative Non-fiction prize. Passionately devoted to jazz on vinyl, Flaubert and wok-based cooking, he is happiest when dancing in the living room with his wife and daughter. He can be found online at: http://www.jonebenfield.com.