David Helwig: Essays on His Works

By Ingrid Ruthig

To date, Canadian poet, novelist, and essayist David Helwig has published close to fifty books and edited numerous others. He has also written for television and radio, worked at the CBC, taught at Queen's University, been Poet Laureate of Prince Edward Island, and was named to the Order of Canada. Yet, he remains little known. This volume is the first to gather new essays, an interview, and earlier material - by George Fetherling, Douglas Glover, D.G. Jones, Simon Lloyd, Tom Marshall, rob mclennan, Shane Neilson, Ingrid Ruthig, Mark Sampson, and Lorraine M. York - in order to introduce and explore Helwig's body of work, while documenting the broad range of his literary talents and accomplishments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica Editions Inc
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781771832915

Book preview

beginning.

Introduction: No Common Life

INGRID RUTHIG

I was seventeen years old, and I had invented a man that I would set out to be … I had given myself the gift of a new ideal of life, one still not very common in Canada, the life of a writer.

— David Helwig, from his memoir, The Names of Things

WITHIN ANY LITERARY COMMUNITY there are those writers who simply go about the business of writing – diligent, dedicated, building a body of work without fanfare. They seem disinclined to court chatter and celebrity, to inflate image and ego, or to stake out a place centre-stage. Instead, they are there, beyond the glare and distraction of prize culture, inspired and inspiring, doing the work.

David Helwig is one of those unassuming craftsmen. Since he first aspired to it more than six decades ago, he has been living the life of a writer. In Canada it’s a career choice more common now than it was during the first half of the twentieth century. By the late 1960s, however, a sea change had taken hold, and with it came new possibilities. Established ways of thinking and writing became outmoded – our nation flew a new flag, sang a new anthem, celebrated a centennial. We had a ‘mod’ and modern world to join. The arts saw unprecedented growth, especially in the realm of literature and publishing, driven forward by the idea/ideal of a national identity and how we might reflect that new sense of self. The era ushered in the likes of Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro. And alongside these contemporaries, Helwig set out to explore human truths and record his own view of this New World order.

He has been a prolific wordsmith and, to date, published nearly fifty books that include novels, novellas, poetry collections, short fiction and translation, and nonfiction consisting of essays and a memoir. As a journalist, reviewer, and columnist, he has written for Toronto Life, The Globe and Mail, and many other publications. Over the years Helwig also worked in radio and television, as Literary Manager of CBC TV Drama and as a writer for series such as Backstretch, The Great Detective, Sidestreet, Morningside, and others. He taught at Queen’s University; conducted a book discussion group at Collins Bay Penitentiary; and through Ottawa’s Oberon Press, with whom he has had a longstanding working relationship, has also been instrumental in helping new writers into print, as editor of (among others) New Canadian Stories (with Joan Harcourt) and as founder and long-time editor of The Best Canadian Stories (with Sandra Martin and later, with his daughter, the writer Maggie Helwig).

Working in a number of forms has allowed him to dig deep into the human situation and capture what he finds, in a way that best tells the story. As the late poet Tom Marshall once summarized, Helwig tackles the depiction of man’s inhumanity to man, the problem of human aggression, the long injustice of history, the loneliness of the individual, the difficulties of human relationship. Although Marshall’s assessment was made in the 1970s, it still applies today.

Helwig’s achievements have not gone entirely unrecognized – the Writers’ Trust of Canada awarded him the 2007 Matt Cohen Prize for a lifetime of distinguished literary work. A year later, he was appointed the third Poet Laureate of Prince Edward Island, and in 2009 he was named a Member of the Order of Canada. His work on CBC Radio and Television has been heard and viewed by many Canadians, yet his name is not household and he remains underappreciated.

This book is the first to discuss and document the range of Helwig’s literary accomplishments. Dating from as early as the 1970s, the essays presented here shift between eras, genres, the general and the specific. Extant articles and reviews have been interwoven with newly commissioned pieces to offer, by way of a bigger picture, contrast, insight, and a fresh perspective. In some cases, the approach has been an overview, plotting the course of his fiction and poetry. In other essays, individual books are discussed to better extract specific preoccupations. Together, they help the reader understand various facets and landmarks, and to see how Helwig’s body of work shapes – and also fits within – the broader context of Canadian literature.

The aim of this volume – and the series it belongs to – is not to compile a comprehensive study of David Helwig’s books, tempting though that might be. Rather, for the unfamiliar reader it is an introduction to the artist and his body of work, and for those readers already in the know, it offers a more detailed look. To open, Ottawa writer rob mclennan’s interview provides a glimpse of the man and his life as a writer. The essay that follows, Bourgeois and Arsonist, returns to 1979, when Tom Marshall examined how Canadian authors at that time revealed or portrayed our country through their writing. Marshall’s essay deals with several aspects of Helwig’s early work and provides an initial perspective, a baseline.

Following these are three views of his poetry from three different stages: a 1974 review written by the highly regarded Canadian poet and critic D.G. Jones, "David Helwig’s New Timber: Notes on The Best Name of Silence, a collection of poems published in 1972; Lorraine M. York’s essay The Progress of Illumination: The Design and Unity of Catchpenny Poems looks at his 1983 collection; and then Shane Neilson brings us forward to the present, with Math, Satire, and Sense: David Helwig’s Seawrack."

The next group of essays tackles the fiction: in "Reaching for Something That Isn’t There: The Fragility of Canada in The Glass Knight, Mark Sampson revisits one of the Kingston novels, examining not only how Helwig’s fiction reflects his political preoccupations, but also how a single novel, written in 1976, maintains relevance in the present day; and Simon Lloyd investigates the ways in which location and landscape affect a writer’s work (in this case, Prince Edward Island, Helwig’s home since 1996) in ‘Still an observer here’? Accessing the Power of Islands in David Helwig’s Saltsea," a novel published in 2007. In my opinion, the novella form is Helwig’s true métier, something I discuss via Duet and Smuggling Donkeys in my own essay Art, Beauty, and the Human Theatre: The Novella Form in the Hands of David Helwig. With The Arsonist’s Revenge, Douglas Glover reconnects with Tom Marshall’s initial essay, in an examination of the 2002 novella The Stand-In.

Finally, briefly, we glimpse once again a life as recalled by the writer himself in his nonfiction – Helwig’s connections, colleagues, and sense of place within the CanLit community – in a review written by George Fetherling of the 2006 memoir, The Names of Things.

In Canada, becoming a ‘career writer’ is no longer unheard of, or considered unattainable. As the publishing world has changed, so have aspirations and expectations. Yet, in many ways the nature of writing has altered and, by extension, the writing life itself. These days it’s harder for most practitioners to sustain. Even when writers are well published, read, discussed, reviewed, and known in literary circles, even when they are dedicated craftsmen, they can remain near-hidden. Perhaps, though, what’s most important is to simply get on with the work. More than sixty years ago, David Helwig invented then realized his own ideal – he has lived that life of the writer and offered a legacy that shouldn’t be forgotten.

12 or 20 Questions with David Helwig

ROB MCLENNAN

Editor’s Note: Literature does not create itself, and even the briefest of conversations can provide an illuminating glimpse of the personality and sensibilities through which the work arose. This particular interview was originally published on rob mclennan’s blog in December 2009.

rob mclennan: How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

David Helwig: Did my first book change my life? Yes, I suppose it gave me an increased sense that it was possible to be a writer. I was thirty years old, not young for a first book, but it was a period when Canadian poetry was fashionable, and the book sold quite a few copies. It included three plays, and I suppose it encouraged me to be inclusive, not rigorously selective.

As to the difference of my new work, well, the poetry is more often written in fairly strict rhymed forms. I began with strict forms, then moved into free verse, but my own free verse and that of most others mostly bores me now. Perhaps I lack the urgency felt by the young and need the struggle of tight forms to lift the level of energy.

What I’ve just written applies, of course, mostly to poetry. As to fiction, it has on the whole grown louder, faster and funnier, to quote the old theatrical joke. Douglas Glover pointed out that I am loudest, fastest and funniest in the (imaginary) first person.

rm: How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

DH: I didn’t come to poetry first. I started out in high school trying to write both poems and stories. For a while in the Sixties, I found it easier to publish poetry than fiction, and that led me to write more poetry. Still, at the time my first poetry book was accepted, I also won a Belmont Award for a short story that appeared in Saturday Night magazine.

rm: How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

DH: I believe, in general, that especially in fiction I write best when I write fastest. Once an idea has taken on some life (how does this happen? who knows?) things move on very quickly. I take some notes, but sometimes they turn out to be only modestly relevant to what creates itself on the page. As an example, I have notes from the spring of 1968, notes begun in Paris, for something that meant to be a novel taking place perhaps in the nineteenth century, with some relation to the history of art. But missing from the notes is the leap by which the supposed novel became a set of lectures in the novella The Stand-In. Once I am in flight, the final shape is usually there, though much detail may get revised.

rm: Where does a poem or piece of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a book from the very beginning?

DH: Fiction most commonly begins with a voice. Or maybe more voices than one. I don’t write bits and pieces. I write stories, the narrative impulse and the voice somehow coming together. Poetry begins in overexcitement, often visual.

rm: Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

DH: Public readings have nothing to do with creation. I have done a bit of acting and a lot of singing, and I have some natural impulse to perform, but it has little to do with the invention of stories or the creation of poems.

rm: Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

DH: I am allergic to generalizations.

rm: What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

DH: See above. A writer is a citizen,