Book: Because Somebody Asked Me To
Because Somebody Asked Me To: Observations on History, Literature, and the Passing Scene
By Guy Vanderhaeghe
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Brandon Fick
Because Somebody Asked Me To: Observations on History, Literature, and the Passing Scene is the first collection of nonfiction published by Guy Vanderhaeghe, one of Canada’s most distinguished writers. On offer are essays, reviews, vignettes, and lectures that explore Vanderhaeghe’s beginnings as a writer, the craft of fiction, amusing life anecdotes, the value of art in society, and the nature of historical fiction. It is a feast of compelling material, a peeling back of the curtain sure to enthrall existing fans of Vanderhaeghe, CanLit enthusiasts, and general readers. In his Author’s Note, Vanderhaeghe states that in gathering the pieces together, which span 1984 to 2023, “it struck me that they bore some resemblance to a spotty, desultory archive of my development as a writer and offered a record of my recurring literary obsessions and foibles.” Whether it is a short recollection or a lengthy lecture, each piece stirs the mind, and any reader of Because Somebody Asked Me To will come away with a strong sense of who Vanderhaeghe is.
One of the most intriguing pieces is “Luck You Need, When You Need It,” a sort of memoir that tracks Vanderhaeghe’s journey from childhood to the publication of his first book, Man Descending, in 1982. He is candid about “how improbable it is that I ever became a writer,” how following his first book winning the Governor General’s Award he was filled with self-doubt and embarrassment, until out of the blue, Margaret Laurence wrote him a letter reminding him that “nothing mattered besides getting on with the work and doing it as well as I could manage.” Luck played a role in his success, but perseverance was even more critical, enabling him to overcome “galling rejections,” one of which saw an editor assume “I was a German speaker” and suggest “I should consider writing in my first language.”
“Character and Circumstance: Writing August Into Winter” is a speech that discusses the inspiration for Vanderhaeghe’s most recent novel, how inspiration was transformed into narrative, what the research involved, how he brought his characters to life, and with the benefit of hindsight, what he was trying to say about our contemporary socio-political climate through the lens of the 1930s. This is a must read for any fan of August Into Winter. Here and elsewhere, Vanderhaeghe also dispenses invaluable craft advice: “I suggest you write the book you would want to read”; “One of the things that can defeat a novel from the very start is to fail to recognize what kind of story you are telling and what is the best way of telling it”; “Without a sense of discovery, you are likely to bore yourself, and a bored writer makes a boring book”; “The heart of plot is inevitably tied to what the characters want.”
Readers of Vanderhaeghe’s often humourous fiction will find just as many instances of wry and self-deprecating humour in his nonfiction. Whether relating his first “excellent adventure” to Toronto as a teenager with Young Voyageurs, his affinity for a Parasaurolophus encountered at the Royal Ontario Museum, a “goofy-looking dino” that reminded him of Daffy Duck, or explaining how he finally became a “high plains drifter” during the filming of the miniseries adaptation of his novel The Englishman’s Boy, Vanderhaeghe will at least get you to crack a smile. In the case of “Writer in Residence,” a tongue-in-cheek yet relatable account of becoming a first-time homeowner, I was laughing out loud. Throughout the book, he also paints quick, striking portraits of various family members: a Protestant, British grandfather, a “loyal Tory” and “bona fide refugee from Mariposa,” a Belgian grandfather with a “square, powerful body, and big round head settled solidly on a stump of a neck,” a “tough-minded mother” who enlisted in the Canadian Women’s Army Corp during the war, then later chafed against the “domestic duties women were expected to resume” post-war, making Vanderhaeghe a “proxy for her own thwarted ambitions” and becoming his “biggest piece of luck.”
Vanderhaeghe speaks eloquently about the role of artists in society, stating in one lecture that “maybe we ought to invite artists to participate in discussions about the future of our urban spaces,” and in another that “thinking by dreams, artistic thinking, is essentially democratic in its nature.” As “free inquiry, free thought, and free speech are the very heart of democracy,” Vanderhaeghe says, “so too are they the core of art.” Woven into sections of the collection is a pressing concern for the current state of democracy, but not in an abstract way. Vanderhaeghe’s concern is anchored in a deep knowledge of history. What does the “growing strength of the Radical right worldwide” mean for human rights, individual liberty, due process, and the rule of law? August Into Winter was written with these questions in mind, and its standout antagonist, Ernie Sickert, a narcissistic, megalomaniac who shares “personality traits that totalitarian leaders have in abundance,” was a “projection onto the page of [Vanderhaeghe’s] greatest fears.”
Of course, a historical novelist of Vanderhaeghe’s pedigree will have something to say about history and attempts to fictionalize it. The final section sees him advocate the use of literature as a supplement to the often dry histories found in textbooks, probe the distinctions between history as a discipline and historical fiction, even discuss the portrayals of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell in A Man For All Seasons and Wolf Hall, and what their clashing fictional depictions say about the respective societies they were created in. As Vanderhaeghe states in his introduction to Timothy Findley’s The Wars, one of the greatest introductions to a book you will ever read, “serious historical novels” are “as much about the present as the past they claim to spread before our eyes.”
This only scratches the surface of what this eclectic collection offers. There are many great reviews of writers Vanderhaeghe admires, like Annie Proulx, Richard Ford, Russell Banks, and John Updike, along with tributes to Canadian literary forebearers like Findley, Laurence, and Mordecai Richler. There is an acknowledgement of the burgeoning “cultural nationalism” of the 1970s and 1980s that he came of age in, and a bit of a lament for the ways in which Canadian literature and publishing has radically transformed in the decades since.
One of the most remarkable things about this collection is how consistent Vanderhaeghe’s voice has remained over the course of forty years. This is not to say that it is static or that he has not evolved as a writer, only that it is distinct, and when he appeared on the literary scene in 1982, what he wanted to say, and how, was relatively well-formed. He is blunt and will say what is on his mind, yet simultaneously, he will carefully choose his words and qualify statements. I speak from personal experience. Over the last five years I’ve gotten to know Guy Vanderhaeghe, first as a student in his fiction course, then from being mentored by him during my MFA, along with watching him speak in interviews and talking to him one on one. The subjects of this collection truly are his obsessions. The voice in these pages really is his voice. Because Somebody Asked Me To is Guy Vanderhaeghe: wise, wry, authentic, and principled.
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