Opening Talk for Vancouver Jewish Book Fair

November 20, 2006

            I am just delighted to be back in Vancouver. When I read at the Jewish Book Fair here two years ago, I was promoting my most recent book of poetry, Running in Prospect Cemetery, but I managed to squeeze in a short excerpt from my then unpublished novel, The Violin Lover also. As the title suggests, The Violin Lover is story about music and its effect on people’s lives. So my profound gratitude goes to Macey Cadesky and Agnes Klinghofer for their beautiful performances so far—you will hear more later—and of course also to Reisa Schneider, the extremely dedicated organizer of this festival, and her staff, for making a shidach between music and words tonight.

The story that sparked The Violin Lover was told to me, over tea of course, by elderly relatives in London, England in the spring of 1997, almost ten years ago. My cousins Anna and Harold mentioned, in passing, a relative of whom I’d never heard: one of their uncles, a man who would have been my great-great uncle: that is, the younger brother of my mother’s grandmother (Are you listening? There’s going to be a test after the reading). Anyhow, this fellow, whose name was Sam, had been a shanda and a harpa – in fact, he was such a major disgrace that none of my relatives back home in Montreal had even heard of him!

 I don’t really want to tell you what he did that was such a disgrace, because that might ruin the book for you! For the same reason I have to warn you not to read the Afterword first like some of my friends did, because that will also spoil the plot. (I thought when I called it an After Word, people would read the words AFTER the rest of the book, but apparently a lot of folk go there first.) But anyhow, the main thing was that poor disgraced Sam had been erased from the family archives for his sins, and I thought that was wrong. No one should be totally forgotten, as though they never had existed, no matter what they did or who they offended. So when I couldn’t stop thinking about the little bit I knew about my black sheep uncle, I decided that it was my job to give him back his history, even if most of it was invented. After all what did I have to go on? A couple of photographs, some childhood memories from my oldest relatives, a sheet of music. Gossip. And misinformation.

For example, the events narrated in my book take place from the fall of 1934 to the spring of 1936, in London and then, briefly, in Vienna and rural Austria. Now everyone knows that Austria in 1936 wasn’t a very good place for the Jews, so naturally I interpreted Uncle Sam’s going there as self-destructive behaviour, and developed my depiction of the character based on him accordingly. So imagine my chagrin when, after I’d already finished the first draft of my book, I found evidence that he’d actually gone to Austria ten years earlier: that is, in 1926. PreHitler. Obviously, going to Austria in 1926 did not mean the same thing as going there in 1936.

Of course, by the time I got this evidence, it was too late to use it.  By then, long lost Great Great uncle Sam Nagley had been transformed into Ned Abraham, a character with his own complex history and motivations.  And that’s when I realized that what I had written was entirely fiction, no matter how many details were borrowed from family history. That Ned, like my Great Great Uncle Sam, was a doctor and a violinist, a bachelor and a womanizer, that he grew up in Leeds, that his father had been an anarchist and that he still lived with his mother as a grown man—these tidbits were suggestive, certainly; they were what I based my character on. But how close my character Ned is to the real man Sam is impossible to say. The people in my novel frequently reflect about how little they know each other. How much more difficult it is to interpret people from the past; people one has never even met.

Our obsession with history is one of the main things The Violin Lover is about.  When I was first sending it around to agents and publishers, I got some reactions that really mystified me. For example, a couple of editors declared, point blank: “we don’t publish historical fiction”.  I find this peculiar, because the traditional storytelling voice is the past tense – “Once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a castle”, etcetera. To rule out historical fiction on principal seems, therefore, to be a very short-sighted policy for any press to have. But I guess what they want is stuff about contemporary society. And of course, that’s their privilege.

A slightly different response was the one I got from an agent, supposedly an experienced editor and lover of books, who complained that I kept talking about dead people, and that readers wouldn’t be interested in them. Now, this reaction really surprised me, because I thought it was clear that a major theme of the book is the way in which our family backgrounds influence our lives. In The Violin Lover, over and over again, the characters believe they’re acting freely and consciously, but every action bears the huge weight of the past. People are only partly aware of their own motivation and what forces compel them to do the things they do. They don’t really know all the ingredients of their physical and emotional DNA, though they try very hard to remember and to understand. All those “dead people” I insisted on writing about shaped my characters, so my characters think about them and remember them often.

Remember the saying, “Those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it”?  Unfortunately, only time gives us enough distance to see the patterns we are caught up in. And then we tend to see patterns everywhere; so many patterns, sometimes, that we start to question if we have any free will at all! In The Violin Lover, I play around with certain key patterns or motifs: for instance, empires flourishing and being lost, buildings burning down, bridges being built and demolished, water turning to ice and snow, men disappearing, war and exile. But as the water/ ice/ snow metaphors suggest, although there is perpetual transformation, some essential identity survives; we are all each other in new forms.

The patterns in our lives result from the necessary tension between freedom and destiny, between difference and identity. And in this regard, they are like the patterns in music which may modulate from major to minor, speed up or slow down, invert themselves: patterns which make it possible to be creative without chaos. Music is the universal language and, as such, another way of describing how human similarities prevail through translation and over time. Especially for the characters in The Violin Lover, who, as Jews and recent immigrants from Russia, feel themselves outsiders in English society, music is a force that both empowers them and joins them to others. 

At this point I’d like to read you the first six pages of the novel, in which we see the power music has over the main character, Ned Abraham, the violin lover. Remember that we’re in London, England in the autumn of 1934. The story starts with Ned walking along the Thames after a concert. (read first 6 pages of book—then Bach partitas—then scene of Ned and Jacob, then Mozart duets, then question and answer period)

I am so pleased at the good reception the book is getting, despite mostly being reviews about poetry and released during a pandemic! Gary Geddes says “There’s a level of wisdom, grace and scholarship in Glickman’s writings that sets her apart from many other poets and critics.”

and Rob Mclennan says “Her gaze is ambitious, exploratory and revealing, offering a thoroughness to the way in which she articulates her thoughts on craft and form, focusing on poetry but open to well beyond the borders of the poetic form.”

https://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2022/04/susan-glickman-artful-flight-essays-and.html

I haven’t been updating this website very much because like everyone else, I have been in suspended animation during these long months of the pandemic. Writing a lot, but not interacting that much with the outside world. If only my arms were longer, so I could reach out to everyone I love. If only my voice were stronger, so I could shout across the seas. If only my heart were braver, so I felt less helpless. If only my mind were wiser, so I knew what to do.

My Answers to questions given to all the panelists in preparation for a session on “When Women Write”: a TIFA event held at Harbourfront – May 29, 2019

How do you think, and feel, about the label “woman writer”? Elaborate.

It depends who is doing the labelling. If the term “woman writer” is being used by men to suggest that I cannot speak for or appeal to an audience that includes dudes, that my work is limited in scope or subject matter just because of my DNA, then I reject it. The term then becomes patronizing, like “authoress” or “poetess” – a sub-category or minority group which assumes that the default term “writer” is always male.

If the term “woman writer” is being used to make connections between my writing and that of other women, then I welcome it.

What do you think it means to be “a woman writer”?

I think it means that I have to try to speak from a position that is not central to the canon and that I have to resist some of the traditions of that canon which might find their way into my writing as uninterrogated habits of vocabulary or outlook if I am not careful. I’ll give you some examples that I noticed, with some shame, when editing my last novel, The Discovery of Flight, for the press. One of the protagonists is a 12-year-old girl keeping a journal in anticipation of her Bat Mitzvah. She is constantly questioning religion. In a few places she referred to God as “he”. I went back and changed all those references to the name “God” or the pronoun “they.” Another time she used the word “mankind”. I changed that to “humanity”. It didn’t feel right, or authentic, for a contemporary kid – an outspoken feminist – defaulting to patriarchal language. But I had done so, through seven drafts of the novel, without noticing until the pressure of publication made me scrutinize every word. (My feminist press didn’t notice either, by the way.)

Another protagonist in the book is a hawk. During that final edit I noticed the hawk saying something egregious as well – she said she would be back “in an hour”. Obviously, hawks don’t think in hours! I changed that to “when the moon rises.” I think these changes are analagous – they come from unconsciously adopting the dominant point of view: that of a male human being.

What (if any) are positive aspects of being a woman writer?

I know a lot of kickass women!

What (if any) are negative ones?

Social pressure and familial expectations that l am still meant to be a domestic goddess. I am supposed to put my husband and children first. I have been chastised by all kinds of folks whenever I complained about not having time to write. My husband is a career glassblower. NO ONE ever suggested that he should put us ahead of his art.

On the other hand, I was also criticized by childless colleagues when I inadvertently quit academia by staying home with my children for too long. So there’s that too.

Did you have any woman writers as role models when you first began writing? Do you now? Do you think this is important?

The poet Denise Levertov was my teacher in university back in the early 70s and remained my mentor and friend. I doubt I would have had the confidence to persist with poetry without her example and encouragement. When I moved to Toronto at the end of that decade, I fell in with a lovely group of poets including Carolyn Smart, Bronwen Wallace, Mary di Michele, and Roo Borson; later friends included Rhea Tregebov and Martha Baillie and, most importantly, British writer Helen Dunmore. Finding like-minded peers has been hugely important for me.

How does being a woman writer intersect with other aspects of your identity (ethnic, racial, sexual, religious, etc.)?

Though I try to include other positions and identities in my work – including, for example, a hawk – I feel most comfortable speaking as a heterosexual Jewish woman. I suspect that writing fiction that is overtly Jewish has limited my audience, however. For example, when The Tale-Teller, my picaresque fantasy about life in 18^th-century Quebec came out, it was reviewed in the English Canadian press as though it was worthy but boring History and therefore of limited interest to anyone who wasn’t Jewish. This was not the case for the French translation, interestingly enough. It was embraced by the Quebec press as an imaginative riff on 18^th-century philosophy. I was thrilled to be read in the intellectual context I had intended.

Do you think there are any differences between how women and men write (in terms of both the writing process and the books themselves: themes, styles, etc.)?

I suspect that when Daddy is in his office writing no one interrupts him. Mommy makes sure of that! Also, when Daddy submits a book, it isn’t pigeonholed as “men’s fiction”; it is simply seen as “fiction.” Incidentally, I have noticed that the same male critics who used to call my poetry “domestic” before they had kids are now writing poems about fatherhood, and they get praised for increasing their range -whereas I was scolded for “limiting” mine by writing about the exact same subjects.

Is there anything distinctly “female” about your writing?

I only write with quills dipped in menstrual blood. Or, failing that, bright pink ink.

Do you think your career as a writer would be different if you were a man? If so, how?

I can’t prove it, but back in the day, when I could never get even one English course to teach at U of T (even though I had a PhD from there and had taught there for years, because the department claimed to be saving those courses for their grad students to teach), Al Mortitz always got courses because he had pals – men his age, serious manly men with tweed jackets and fake English accents who had gone to American universities – in the English Department. He had the gravitas they were looking for. That is, he had supreme self-confidence, a deep voice, and a beard. I had none of these things. I am not blaming Al for this, by the way. The prejudice is systemic.

On the other hand, I think my career would have been different if I’d flattered such men more, or flirted with them, or been cuter, or more helpless. Alas, I was neither a man nor a “feminine” enough woman.

Do you think being a woman writer affects any of the following?

• Your creative process / the act of writing
•  Yes because of domestic expectations, obligations, lack of time, constant interruption
• The likelihood of your books getting reviewed
• Yes, obviously, see CWILA!
• The likelihood of your getting invited to write book reviews
• Perhaps – I have no idea because no one has asked me for years. Being old is nearly as bad as being a woman when it comes to such things, and I am both.
• The likelihood of your getting invited to speak on panels and at conferences
• I suspect so. For the same reasons – female and old.

Have been at home writing a new book of poetry and editing, remotely, as I always have done. Feel so privileged to be able to continue my work during the Covid pandemic. Sending strength and love to all my friends and colleagues. May we find serenity in these fraught times and learn what we need to do to build a healthier world.

Very excited about this project! Our family used to listen to audiobooks on long car trips to the grandparents in New York and in Montreal. They are such a fabulous resource. I actually recorded my first novel, The Violin Lover, for the CNIB, but I think a professional actor will do a better job than I did – if only because anticipating what was coming, I made mistakes or even edited my own words, requiring an embarrassing number of takes!