Coach House Books asks Dennis Denisoff a few things about The Winter Gardeners
CH: Your style could be described as ‘Canadian Gothic’ – would it be fair to describe it as the lovechild of Susanna Moodie and Truman Capote?
DD: Oh I love that, but no, no … I can’t do Capote at all. It’s more Ronald Firbank using his swizzle stick to keep the Group of Seven from blocking the sunlight. It doesn’t sound very gothic when I put it that way, but imagine how the Group would look at Firbank if he suddenly meandered into their view – sheer horror, I’d bet.
CH: So, who are your influences?
DD: Influences, I’m not sure of, but people I read over and over again … Firbank, Ivy Compton Burnett, Muriel Spark, Stevie Smith, David Sedaris, Mariko Tamaki. If some of it rubs off on me, that’s great, but I can’t say I really see any of them in what I produce (except for a few canapés of homage). I edit a literary journal, The White Wall Review, and I’m amazed at the number of Canadian fiction writers who can sustain a sort of vulnerable yet caustic humour. I think it’s this eloquence of the walking wounded that I am most attracted to. That and authors who use language to play dress up.
CH: Do you identify strongly with any one of the characters?
DD: I’d like to say Rob. He’s the most subtle and calculating; I mean, for most of the novel he manoeuvres amongst the characters without speaking, without even getting out of bed. But I think it may be that I’m just most attracted to him. As a character. While I was working on the novel, those times when I lay awake in the middle of the night were often because of Shirley. That poor squirrel – she experienced the dailiness of pain but never had the privilege of dressing it with humour or compassion. It’s not just me; I think there are a lot of people who don’t have the time for humour and compassion, which makes the pain much less pleasant.
CH: Why a whippet?
DD: Dogs do seem to keep shuffling through my work. Sincerely, I’m not sure why. Perhaps I chose a whippet because of the sadomasochistic allusions of the word ‘whippet’ itself, which echoes in the ‘chaps’ of the scoundrel’s name. The dog in The Winter Gardeners went through a series of breeds (at times even being a rather dull four-year-old) but the proud yet frenetic whippet seemed best to embody the energy of the character. The breed’s quietude and hunting instinct fit perfectly with the plot but, in the end, I believe a whippet’s physicality and character most fully embodied a persona that could feasibly sustain such a carnal appetite with a persistence one usually only finds in tractor equipment.
CH: Is there really a Lake Wachannabee?
DD: There’re hundreds of them, all over Canada. Although one would be hard pressed to find a lake that large that wouldn’t now be characterized by the whizzing effrontery of Sea-Doos. The lake in Winter Gardeners is a combination of Eels Lake, Austin Lake, Ox Tongue Lake and various bays along Lake Huron and Lake Superior with a bit of Prince Edward County thrown in. Most of the novel was first drafted at one or another of these locations. Great names, but they were too obvious, too visual, to use in the book.
CH: Are you a gardener? An avant-gardener? Have you ever planted any Marcel Duchamp paintings?
DD: We’ve got a gardening allotment and our front yard is peppered with nasturtiums, hollyhocks and poke bushes, but none of this really requires skills. In the early spring, we laid out some brick paths at the allotment that vaguely suggest something Rennie Mackintoshesque, but the weeds erased that rather quickly. I grew up in the BC wilds and have been hiking and canoeing in northern Ontario for some years now so, ultimately, I’d say my preference is for unadulterated Canadian forest.
