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Lieutenant Governor’s Award, April 2006
Your Honour, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I've been a little leery of awards ever since my first novel won a prize sponsored by a distillery. They kindly invited me to be their guest at a four-day conference where I would be presented with the award at the banquet on the final day. They didn't tell me till I'd arrived that I was to be the bartender at their open house for four days, so I didn't tell them that I'd
forgotten everything I'd ever known about mixing drinks. I relied on a vague memory that associated drinks with certain colours and hoped that being overly generous with the booze would make up for my ignorance - but I hadn't anticipated that I would cause distinguished gentlemen to get into drunken fist-fights and elegant ladies to offer me their room keys.
Since the imposter syndrome has been my lifelong companion I shall have to pretend for a while tonight that I may actually deserve this wonderful award. It won't last, because I know that when I sit down at my desk on Monday I'll be a beginner again. It is a fact of life for a novelist that every new novel must be invented out of the demands of its own materials and cannot be simply a replica of something already done.
Although I wanted to write fiction from the time I learned to read, I didn't have any thought of writing stories set on Vancouver Island. It was obvious to me that the reason I'd seen or heard of no books set on the Island or in B.C. was that this place must not be interesting enough to anyone else to deserve such attention. Books were set elsewhere, in the "real"; world of London, or Mississippi, or California.
So I wrote a Mississippi novel that might have been written by William Faulkner on one of his worst days. And I wrote a poor imitation of a John Steinbeck novel. And I wrote of characters who might have lived in Al Capp's comic strips, set in the Ozark mountains of my private Arkansas. When these novels and several stories were rejected it seemed for a while that I ought to quit this foolish ambition. But about this time I began to notice that my extended family in rural parts of the Comox Valley were telling me gossip about friends and relatives that seemed as interesting to me as anything I'd read about in books.
It occurred to me that perhaps I'd found a gold mine in my own back yard.
I began to fashion stories out of bits and pieces of the life around me, the life I remembered from my childhood, and the life that was reported to me by the tale-carriers. Of course I had to tone things down a bit so people elsewhere would believe me. Even so, those far to the east thought I was making it all up out of an imagination given to gross exaggeration, while people on Vancouver Island were not shy about saying "That was a pretty good story there, Hodgins, but I could've told you a better one. Why don't you tell them what it's really like?";
I've tried. I'm trying.
Yet, several years ago, after an academic from Back East had been to visit for several days - had been shown the island, introduced to friends, and exposed to my relatives - his parting words when I took him to the ferry were, "I used to believe you have the greatest imagination in Canada, but now I know you don't have any at all!";
You can't win.
Or, it seems tonight, that sometimes you can.
I would like to take advantage of this moment to acknowledge the support I have received from Dianne, who, when I told her what I wanted to do with my life, married me anyway, and is still with me after 45 years. I would like also to acknowledge Bill New, who, back in the late fifties when I was hitch-hiking daily to UBC, was amongst those who stopped to give me a ride, became a life-long friend, and has shown me time and again that my books are smarter than I am - and that they must be listened to before I consider them "done." In addition I am enormously grateful to Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor, who initiated this award, in order to reinforce the importance of telling our stories, of honouring our people, and of recognizing our place.
Even so, award or no award, I will continue to write with a beginner's hunger and trepidation, hoping every time that I may finally have earned this award.
I've been a little leery of awards ever since my first novel won a prize sponsored by a distillery. They kindly invited me to be their guest at a four-day conference where I would be presented with the award at the banquet on the final day. They didn't tell me till I'd arrived that I was to be the bartender at their open house for four days, so I didn't tell them that I'd
forgotten everything I'd ever known about mixing drinks. I relied on a vague memory that associated drinks with certain colours and hoped that being overly generous with the booze would make up for my ignorance - but I hadn't anticipated that I would cause distinguished gentlemen to get into drunken fist-fights and elegant ladies to offer me their room keys.
Since the imposter syndrome has been my lifelong companion I shall have to pretend for a while tonight that I may actually deserve this wonderful award. It won't last, because I know that when I sit down at my desk on Monday I'll be a beginner again. It is a fact of life for a novelist that every new novel must be invented out of the demands of its own materials and cannot be simply a replica of something already done.
Although I wanted to write fiction from the time I learned to read, I didn't have any thought of writing stories set on Vancouver Island. It was obvious to me that the reason I'd seen or heard of no books set on the Island or in B.C. was that this place must not be interesting enough to anyone else to deserve such attention. Books were set elsewhere, in the "real"; world of London, or Mississippi, or California.
So I wrote a Mississippi novel that might have been written by William Faulkner on one of his worst days. And I wrote a poor imitation of a John Steinbeck novel. And I wrote of characters who might have lived in Al Capp's comic strips, set in the Ozark mountains of my private Arkansas. When these novels and several stories were rejected it seemed for a while that I ought to quit this foolish ambition. But about this time I began to notice that my extended family in rural parts of the Comox Valley were telling me gossip about friends and relatives that seemed as interesting to me as anything I'd read about in books.
It occurred to me that perhaps I'd found a gold mine in my own back yard.
I began to fashion stories out of bits and pieces of the life around me, the life I remembered from my childhood, and the life that was reported to me by the tale-carriers. Of course I had to tone things down a bit so people elsewhere would believe me. Even so, those far to the east thought I was making it all up out of an imagination given to gross exaggeration, while people on Vancouver Island were not shy about saying "That was a pretty good story there, Hodgins, but I could've told you a better one. Why don't you tell them what it's really like?";
I've tried. I'm trying.
Yet, several years ago, after an academic from Back East had been to visit for several days - had been shown the island, introduced to friends, and exposed to my relatives - his parting words when I took him to the ferry were, "I used to believe you have the greatest imagination in Canada, but now I know you don't have any at all!";
You can't win.
Or, it seems tonight, that sometimes you can.
I would like to take advantage of this moment to acknowledge the support I have received from Dianne, who, when I told her what I wanted to do with my life, married me anyway, and is still with me after 45 years. I would like also to acknowledge Bill New, who, back in the late fifties when I was hitch-hiking daily to UBC, was amongst those who stopped to give me a ride, became a life-long friend, and has shown me time and again that my books are smarter than I am - and that they must be listened to before I consider them "done." In addition I am enormously grateful to Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor, who initiated this award, in order to reinforce the importance of telling our stories, of honouring our people, and of recognizing our place.
Even so, award or no award, I will continue to write with a beginner's hunger and trepidation, hoping every time that I may finally have earned this award.
Submitted on June 1, 2006 in By David.
