Date and place of birth: January 29, 1947 in Winterthur, Switzerland.
Arrival in Canada, May 15, 1969. Details of immigration: transatlantic crossing, Rotterdam-New York on the Holland-America Line, April 1969. New York - Montreal by Train, May 1969.
Margrith Schraner came to Canada at age 22 and gained her English degree from Simon Fraser University. Her short story 'Dream Dig' which first appeared in the New Orphic Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, was selected for inclusion in The Journey Prize Anthology 13 (2001). She was Associate Editor of the New Orphic Review since its inception, in 1997.
Tolstoy's wife wrote nine versions of War and Peace for her husband; Margrith Schraner has published The Reluctant Author: The Life and Literature of Ernest Hekkanen (New Orphic, 2006 $25), a lucid and surprisingly objective appraisal of her husband's remarkable output. We learn that Hekkanen originally intended to become a playwright but realized he wasn't a very sociable person, a quality that struck him as essential for the theatre world. "I would contend that much like Kafka," she writes, "Hekkanen has erected his own Great Wall of Fictional Defense...." But unlike his role model, she says, Hekkanen revises his short stories and novels for each new edition. She also describes her pivotal impressions of him at the Burnaby Art Centre in 1988. Since then the Nelson-based couple has operated their own art gallery, literary periodical and publishing imprint. On May 17, 2013, Ernest Hekkanen and Margrith Schraner celebrated the 'Sweet 16' anniversary of New Orphic Review at the Oxygen Art Center in Nelson, B.C.
Other employment: Herbalist (1995 - 2017).
Other work: "To Travel the Distance", a novel in progress, in addition to several short stories and translations - has been featured in 26 of the 40 issues of The New Orphic Review.
Her Short story, "Dream Dig", first published in The New Orphic Review, was selected for inclusion in "Journey Prize Anthology 13" (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 2001).
Her entry on the "Literary Writes 2007" competition (FBCW, Fed. of BC Writers) made the judge's long list selection.
New Orphic Review:
www3.telus.net/neworphicpublishers-hekkanen
BOOKS:
Black Snow: An Imaginative Memoir, co-authored with Ernest Hekkanen (Vancouver: New Orphic Publishers, 1996).
The Reluctant Author: The Life and Literature of Ernest Hekkanen; an Informal Study.(Nelson BC: New Orphic Publishers, 2006.)
[BCBW 2007] "Fiction" "Literary Criticism"
Endpiece: A Memoir of the New Orphic Review
"I now conceive of Endpiece as a caboose-a railway wagon attached to the end of a train. The lights at the back of the caboose may point to the existence of the wagon, but they do not indicate the destination of the train."
by Margrith Schraner
The sun is a tomato red safari disc afloat in a sky of dusky grey. Kootenay Lake is cast in bronze, surrounding hills flattened, a two-dimensional moonscape of ghostly yellow mottled with bleach.
Staccato voices of crows are calling out to each other across the refracted light; a raucous cry, amplified: an angry cough, a harsh complaint.
Locate the past: "Look back twenty years," you say to encourage me. "Write a nostalgic piece; go back to The New Orphic Review in its infancy."
My nostrils sniff the air in hopes of catching a whiff of memory: Incredibly soft, the mossy green of woodsy enclaves, of shady coves bordering the Pacific.
1996 was the year New Orphic Publishers released my first book, Black Snow: an imaginative memoir (co-authored with Ernest Hekkanen). Recalling 1997, the year we both turned fifty, the year we both called Vancouver 'home', the year we crossed the Atlantic and Ernest met my Swiss family. The year Ernest presented a paper at the North American Studies Conference in Tampere, Finland. A fertile time--The New Orphic Review, our love child, then still a twinkle in his eye.
By spring of the following year, the first issue of our literary magazine was born...
Start with where you are: I am reluctant to reckon with the past, to detail events related to our publishing lives, afraid that if I start looking back twenty years, I'll get sucked under, pulled down into a mire of murky detail, or worse get caught in the proverbial brambles of nostalgia, blinding me to what is of relevance. Moreover, I'm troubled by the thought that something significant-something that has influenced our lives to such a large degree-will reach a terminus, a final point. Gate closed.
The year so far has taken endurance, tenacity. Health issues have zapped our elan vital, set us back. We've both come away from various medical tests unscathed; emerged from the acute stages of whatever it was that assailed us this spring. The fire season appears to have laid much of our enterprising spirit to rest.
In the West Kootenay, we've been holding our breath for weeks now. We wake up sneezing, suck in air laden with smoke, our vision blurred. Hot winds tear at majestic maple trees. Small airplanes now unable to take off or land due to particulate matter in the air. Limited visibility; temperatures rising above 35 degrees Celsius. Helicopters trailing buckets through the air, skirting the flank of Elephant Mountain, carrying gallons of water to dowse flames old and new. Fire updates; fire risks; fire reports.
Whatever happened to our creative engagement? Where is the spark we have come to expect that used to drive us on?
"How do I prepare for where the path leads next?" The question, selected at random from No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering, by Clara Bensen, found on a library shelf recently, led me to envision a new direction, a possible way of moving forward, even if to do so might necessitate going back-after breakwater a new wave, a process of divination, seeking the sort of guidance offered by a Tarot card.
Where to begin, if not with a question: Aren't my fundamental passions editing, proofreading?
My present writing-isn't it connected to the writing I have done over the past twenty years-and therefore, am I not grateful to the Editor-in-Chief of The New Orphic Review for his encouragement?
I can see it now from where I stand: A nod of acknowledgement to Pythagoras, and a generous thank-you wave to Ernest, the founder of New Orphic Publishers; a gesture of gratitude from the bottom of my heart. He gave me a chance to develop as a reader, but also as a writer-the kind of writer I imagined I could be. He stood by my side, encouraged me-employed what he jokingly referred to as the carrot-and-stick method-writing in red ink the words, 'Keep going' at the top of the single-spaced draft I would write, followed by numerous re-writes, which I would diligently type out on his I.B.M. Selectric, while he went out to earn a living as a self-employed renovator.
And when I was ready to handle more feedback, he offered it gently-saying that what my work lacked primarily was something called architecture, before going on to suggest how I might shape the body of my inchoate material (possibly in the manner of Maxwell Perkins, whose suggestions had helped shape the unwieldy outpourings of many a famous writer, Thomas Wolfe among them, although I'm fully aware that a Thomas Wolfe I'll never be).
Next to his typewriter, each workday morning, I would find a couple of newly-produced pages of his writing, read them over with interest, marvel at his prodigious talent, catch misspellings, and pencil in some suggestions or corrections of my own. I was starting to harbor jealousy toward his Muse, who seemed to demand an inordinate amount of his time, when one fine morning, months later, when I sat down to do some typing of my own, I found a yellow rose that he had left for me.
Decisive moments, utter beginnings, pivotal events: An inkling, from the time I was twelve years old--a Swiss girl reading teen novels borrowed from the village school library, and a born romantic from the start--that what I wanted more than anything was to meet a real-life writer in the flesh. I was forty-one when it happened: Here, in my lap had landed the work of the published writer, Ernest Hekkanen. I loved the quality of his imagination, his quirky humor. I recall the day I rode the city bus from Horseshoe Bay back to Vancouver with my teenage daughter, laughing tears while reading a passage to her from his short story collection, The Violent Lavender Beast.
At the funeral of a playwright we had both known, listening to Ernest read a selected passage from the playwright's work, I instantly fell in love, was smitten with the timbre of his voice. "It's dangerous," one of my girlfriends cautioned me. "A man is not his work, you ought to know that." And when I continued to sing Ernest's praises, she sighed dramatically and pleaded, "Tone it down."
Ernest took me along to the launch of his second book in Burnaby, offered me a ride in his yellow truck. I put my Swiss embroidery skills to work; decorated the front of my long-sleeved tank top with what I then conceived of as a daring slogan: "Sleep with an author--Buy a book," inspired by utter coup de foudre.
A few weeks later, he invited me to accompany him to a Writers Union of Canada meeting, followed by a potluck, held at the home of Jan Drabek. "Hi, I'm Ernest," he said, heading for the kitchen with his frying pan, "but I'm not earnest all the time." He garnered a few knowing smiles, set the squid he had prepared, afloat in a tomato sauce and spiced with caraway seeds, down on the stove for later reheating. He wore shorts and sandals then, black polyester dress socks that reached up to mid-calf. "I'm not kosher--I'm even gaucher than I was before," he remarked upon hearing me read this passage. He introduced me to the cadre of published writers that were present. Assuming that I was a writer, they proceeded to question me about the subject of my book. I fibbed, and when they inquired whether I was receiving PLR payments I replied in the affirmative, although I had no idea what PLR referred to. Ernest, who had two books to his name, came to my rescue. "We're a couple of retreads making a new run at it," he said. I liked his self-effacing humor; it seemed indicative of a certain flexibility of mind. He was comfortable, unapologetic. His outspokenness and devil-may-care attitude were some of the qualities I felt had been trained out of me by my Swiss upbringing. They were a welcome antidote to the repressive climate, which I would describe as a kind of inbred seriousness. People were hard-working yet humorless. Entrenched attitudes, unspoken assumptions and parameters kept everyone in line-restrictions against which I instinctively rebelled, and which may have contributed to my desire to leave Switzerland. Ernest, having grown up in North America, knew no such constraints. I found his authenticity inspiring, started to give myself permission to explore, experiment. I started writing. My valiant attempt to get even, to level the playing field with my internal censor and my internal critic, is evident in Black Snow: an imaginative memoir.
On our third get-together, I shared with him my long-held wish to come face to face with a rare creature. I had never seen a rhinoceros. I envisioned a treasure hunt of sorts; hoped to come away from it with a sense of awe. To facilitate my meeting with the near-miraculous, he agreed to drive me in his quarter-ton pickup truck to a game farm near Abbotsford, where I stood, saddened by the sight of two rhinoceroses, a mother and baby held in captivity, huddled together on a patch of dirt. We ended the day with a burger at the Red Robin on Broadway. After many years of vegetarianism, I was starting to crave meat. More accurately, I was possessed by a desire to sink my teeth into more than literature.
One of our first squabbles was about literature--less a debate and more like a passionate exchange of views--mine, an argument informed by years of academic training; his, stemming from decades of writing, a vocation grounded in the writer's craft. "I'm not doing too badly for an incompetent," he would often assert. And while I felt competitive, bent on winning the argument with him, his view was disarming. In the end, neither of us won; we both recognized that we would need one another, resolved to pull together for better or for worse. We began to share our limited resources, moved into a townhouse on Victoria Drive; saw ourselves obliged to sublet two of the bedrooms in order to come up with the monthly rent. Among our friends in Vancouver's East End were many artists whose passionate pursuits were in theatre, art and literature. The nineteen-nineties were a helter-skelter time. We were getting used to taking risks: Our house became an informal venue for poets, writers and sometimes musicians to come and present their work. The 'Living Room Series' was an idea hatched by poets Chad Norman and Catherine Owen, who organized these monthly gatherings. Ernest, who was also a visual artist, and whose paintings and woodblock prints hung on our walls, carved and painted a wooden shingle that announced the New Orphic Gallery, which would hang from the portico of our townhouse on such nights. Our circle of literary acquaintances kept expanding. Ernest continued painting. I took courses in darkroom and photography. Featured among the contributors to the inaugural issue of The New Orphic Review were many who had taken part in our monthly soirees. Although our abode was a far cry from Gertrude Stein's salons, the company of gifted writers inspired us, kept us busy, buoyant.
Submissions to The New Orphic Review began to arrive. We made room; managed to fit a bi-annual publishing schedule into our busy lives. Ernest took care of all the facets of publishing: he typed and photocopied, then collated individual pages; he did lay-out and designed the magazine covers; hand-bound each copy using glue and thread; took care of all correspondence with the authors, took care of distribution and accounting, too. The noble tasks of copy-editing and proofreading fell to me.
The selection of contributors for each issue of the NOR was not an arbitrary process; it evolved over time in an intuitive and organic fashion. The content was relevant and fresh, reflective of the varying influences of the times, the multitude of concerns, pursuits and intellectual preoccupations of the Editor-in-Chief, and to a lesser extent, mine. We pushed to meet the publication deadline every Spring and every Fall, the fury of production year after year usurping all our attention. Forty issues will soon be arrayed on the bookshelf in his upstairs office. Twenty years: Three in Vancouver, the rest in Nelson, B.C.
Many other interests in our messy lives have vied for our attention, but New Orphic Publishers has maintained a central place. Ernest to date is the author of forty-seven books. Hanging on our walls are paintings and photographs, salon-style. Our home, the abode of New Orphic Publishers and the New Orphic Gallery, is a Literary Landmark, due to the efforts of BC BookWorld's Alan Twigg. We can be located; We have internet presence; we are # 123 on the Literary Map of B.C.
Now that we are in the throes of readying the final issue for publication, I realize that what I have written is a far cry from the chronology I had once envisioned. It is a sketch, not a tidy, little history of The New Orphic Review. It is not a linear account, based on entries in my numerous notebooks, and neither is it a matter of sorting out cause and effect. From the moment I began to write this article, it changed-clearly a matter of observer affecting that which is observed. On any given day, I would recall new facets of the NOR's history. The manner of my recounting changed along with it. What I have written is impressionistic, mirroring the unique way in which memory works.
In view of the fact that the vast NOR chapter of our lives will soon reach a conclusion, I have discovered that significant moments are not unlike the luminous dots that speak of the presence of stars in a night sky. As such, they share a momentary connection, some relatedness only we can see. It is neither the result of linearity nor logic. These, the highlights in our shared publishing history, belong to a different order. They may speak of the contributors to our literary journal as affinities, as echoes, fractals in a Fibonacci spiral, even. The creative work that has filled the pages of The New Orphic Review over the past twenty years testifies to our interdependence: Our literary magazine is the physical manifestation of what Ernest sees as his ephemeral community. The community has essence; it endures, cannot be lost. The tongue-in-cheek summation of our mandate, I would say, is that New Orphic is the cornerstone of co-dependent publishing.
We find ourselves at a juncture--but we are not at the end. The adventure and the risks we take will continue in other ways.
I now conceive of "Endpiece" as a caboose-a railway wagon attached to the end of a train. The lights at the back of the caboose may point to the existence of the wagon, but they do not indicate the destination of the train.
Locate the future: What matters now is that the wind will shift and rain will come. The fire season will soon be over. And, yes--we all know the signal lantern will be raised. There will be waves good-bye; the train is bound for places yet unknown. New and exciting narratives will soon consume us, and as per usual, the train moves on.
[BCBW 2018]
Arrival in Canada, May 15, 1969. Details of immigration: transatlantic crossing, Rotterdam-New York on the Holland-America Line, April 1969. New York - Montreal by Train, May 1969.
Margrith Schraner came to Canada at age 22 and gained her English degree from Simon Fraser University. Her short story 'Dream Dig' which first appeared in the New Orphic Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, was selected for inclusion in The Journey Prize Anthology 13 (2001). She was Associate Editor of the New Orphic Review since its inception, in 1997.
Tolstoy's wife wrote nine versions of War and Peace for her husband; Margrith Schraner has published The Reluctant Author: The Life and Literature of Ernest Hekkanen (New Orphic, 2006 $25), a lucid and surprisingly objective appraisal of her husband's remarkable output. We learn that Hekkanen originally intended to become a playwright but realized he wasn't a very sociable person, a quality that struck him as essential for the theatre world. "I would contend that much like Kafka," she writes, "Hekkanen has erected his own Great Wall of Fictional Defense...." But unlike his role model, she says, Hekkanen revises his short stories and novels for each new edition. She also describes her pivotal impressions of him at the Burnaby Art Centre in 1988. Since then the Nelson-based couple has operated their own art gallery, literary periodical and publishing imprint. On May 17, 2013, Ernest Hekkanen and Margrith Schraner celebrated the 'Sweet 16' anniversary of New Orphic Review at the Oxygen Art Center in Nelson, B.C.
Other employment: Herbalist (1995 - 2017).
Other work: "To Travel the Distance", a novel in progress, in addition to several short stories and translations - has been featured in 26 of the 40 issues of The New Orphic Review.
Her Short story, "Dream Dig", first published in The New Orphic Review, was selected for inclusion in "Journey Prize Anthology 13" (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 2001).
Her entry on the "Literary Writes 2007" competition (FBCW, Fed. of BC Writers) made the judge's long list selection.
New Orphic Review:
www3.telus.net/neworphicpublishers-hekkanen
BOOKS:
Black Snow: An Imaginative Memoir, co-authored with Ernest Hekkanen (Vancouver: New Orphic Publishers, 1996).
The Reluctant Author: The Life and Literature of Ernest Hekkanen; an Informal Study.(Nelson BC: New Orphic Publishers, 2006.)
[BCBW 2007] "Fiction" "Literary Criticism"
A PERSONAL ESSAY
Endpiece: A Memoir of the New Orphic Review
"I now conceive of Endpiece as a caboose-a railway wagon attached to the end of a train. The lights at the back of the caboose may point to the existence of the wagon, but they do not indicate the destination of the train."
by Margrith Schraner
The sun is a tomato red safari disc afloat in a sky of dusky grey. Kootenay Lake is cast in bronze, surrounding hills flattened, a two-dimensional moonscape of ghostly yellow mottled with bleach.
Staccato voices of crows are calling out to each other across the refracted light; a raucous cry, amplified: an angry cough, a harsh complaint.
Locate the past: "Look back twenty years," you say to encourage me. "Write a nostalgic piece; go back to The New Orphic Review in its infancy."
My nostrils sniff the air in hopes of catching a whiff of memory: Incredibly soft, the mossy green of woodsy enclaves, of shady coves bordering the Pacific.
1996 was the year New Orphic Publishers released my first book, Black Snow: an imaginative memoir (co-authored with Ernest Hekkanen). Recalling 1997, the year we both turned fifty, the year we both called Vancouver 'home', the year we crossed the Atlantic and Ernest met my Swiss family. The year Ernest presented a paper at the North American Studies Conference in Tampere, Finland. A fertile time--The New Orphic Review, our love child, then still a twinkle in his eye.
By spring of the following year, the first issue of our literary magazine was born...
Start with where you are: I am reluctant to reckon with the past, to detail events related to our publishing lives, afraid that if I start looking back twenty years, I'll get sucked under, pulled down into a mire of murky detail, or worse get caught in the proverbial brambles of nostalgia, blinding me to what is of relevance. Moreover, I'm troubled by the thought that something significant-something that has influenced our lives to such a large degree-will reach a terminus, a final point. Gate closed.
The year so far has taken endurance, tenacity. Health issues have zapped our elan vital, set us back. We've both come away from various medical tests unscathed; emerged from the acute stages of whatever it was that assailed us this spring. The fire season appears to have laid much of our enterprising spirit to rest.
In the West Kootenay, we've been holding our breath for weeks now. We wake up sneezing, suck in air laden with smoke, our vision blurred. Hot winds tear at majestic maple trees. Small airplanes now unable to take off or land due to particulate matter in the air. Limited visibility; temperatures rising above 35 degrees Celsius. Helicopters trailing buckets through the air, skirting the flank of Elephant Mountain, carrying gallons of water to dowse flames old and new. Fire updates; fire risks; fire reports.
Whatever happened to our creative engagement? Where is the spark we have come to expect that used to drive us on?
"How do I prepare for where the path leads next?" The question, selected at random from No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering, by Clara Bensen, found on a library shelf recently, led me to envision a new direction, a possible way of moving forward, even if to do so might necessitate going back-after breakwater a new wave, a process of divination, seeking the sort of guidance offered by a Tarot card.
Where to begin, if not with a question: Aren't my fundamental passions editing, proofreading?
My present writing-isn't it connected to the writing I have done over the past twenty years-and therefore, am I not grateful to the Editor-in-Chief of The New Orphic Review for his encouragement?
I can see it now from where I stand: A nod of acknowledgement to Pythagoras, and a generous thank-you wave to Ernest, the founder of New Orphic Publishers; a gesture of gratitude from the bottom of my heart. He gave me a chance to develop as a reader, but also as a writer-the kind of writer I imagined I could be. He stood by my side, encouraged me-employed what he jokingly referred to as the carrot-and-stick method-writing in red ink the words, 'Keep going' at the top of the single-spaced draft I would write, followed by numerous re-writes, which I would diligently type out on his I.B.M. Selectric, while he went out to earn a living as a self-employed renovator.
And when I was ready to handle more feedback, he offered it gently-saying that what my work lacked primarily was something called architecture, before going on to suggest how I might shape the body of my inchoate material (possibly in the manner of Maxwell Perkins, whose suggestions had helped shape the unwieldy outpourings of many a famous writer, Thomas Wolfe among them, although I'm fully aware that a Thomas Wolfe I'll never be).
Next to his typewriter, each workday morning, I would find a couple of newly-produced pages of his writing, read them over with interest, marvel at his prodigious talent, catch misspellings, and pencil in some suggestions or corrections of my own. I was starting to harbor jealousy toward his Muse, who seemed to demand an inordinate amount of his time, when one fine morning, months later, when I sat down to do some typing of my own, I found a yellow rose that he had left for me.
Decisive moments, utter beginnings, pivotal events: An inkling, from the time I was twelve years old--a Swiss girl reading teen novels borrowed from the village school library, and a born romantic from the start--that what I wanted more than anything was to meet a real-life writer in the flesh. I was forty-one when it happened: Here, in my lap had landed the work of the published writer, Ernest Hekkanen. I loved the quality of his imagination, his quirky humor. I recall the day I rode the city bus from Horseshoe Bay back to Vancouver with my teenage daughter, laughing tears while reading a passage to her from his short story collection, The Violent Lavender Beast.
At the funeral of a playwright we had both known, listening to Ernest read a selected passage from the playwright's work, I instantly fell in love, was smitten with the timbre of his voice. "It's dangerous," one of my girlfriends cautioned me. "A man is not his work, you ought to know that." And when I continued to sing Ernest's praises, she sighed dramatically and pleaded, "Tone it down."
Ernest took me along to the launch of his second book in Burnaby, offered me a ride in his yellow truck. I put my Swiss embroidery skills to work; decorated the front of my long-sleeved tank top with what I then conceived of as a daring slogan: "Sleep with an author--Buy a book," inspired by utter coup de foudre.
A few weeks later, he invited me to accompany him to a Writers Union of Canada meeting, followed by a potluck, held at the home of Jan Drabek. "Hi, I'm Ernest," he said, heading for the kitchen with his frying pan, "but I'm not earnest all the time." He garnered a few knowing smiles, set the squid he had prepared, afloat in a tomato sauce and spiced with caraway seeds, down on the stove for later reheating. He wore shorts and sandals then, black polyester dress socks that reached up to mid-calf. "I'm not kosher--I'm even gaucher than I was before," he remarked upon hearing me read this passage. He introduced me to the cadre of published writers that were present. Assuming that I was a writer, they proceeded to question me about the subject of my book. I fibbed, and when they inquired whether I was receiving PLR payments I replied in the affirmative, although I had no idea what PLR referred to. Ernest, who had two books to his name, came to my rescue. "We're a couple of retreads making a new run at it," he said. I liked his self-effacing humor; it seemed indicative of a certain flexibility of mind. He was comfortable, unapologetic. His outspokenness and devil-may-care attitude were some of the qualities I felt had been trained out of me by my Swiss upbringing. They were a welcome antidote to the repressive climate, which I would describe as a kind of inbred seriousness. People were hard-working yet humorless. Entrenched attitudes, unspoken assumptions and parameters kept everyone in line-restrictions against which I instinctively rebelled, and which may have contributed to my desire to leave Switzerland. Ernest, having grown up in North America, knew no such constraints. I found his authenticity inspiring, started to give myself permission to explore, experiment. I started writing. My valiant attempt to get even, to level the playing field with my internal censor and my internal critic, is evident in Black Snow: an imaginative memoir.
On our third get-together, I shared with him my long-held wish to come face to face with a rare creature. I had never seen a rhinoceros. I envisioned a treasure hunt of sorts; hoped to come away from it with a sense of awe. To facilitate my meeting with the near-miraculous, he agreed to drive me in his quarter-ton pickup truck to a game farm near Abbotsford, where I stood, saddened by the sight of two rhinoceroses, a mother and baby held in captivity, huddled together on a patch of dirt. We ended the day with a burger at the Red Robin on Broadway. After many years of vegetarianism, I was starting to crave meat. More accurately, I was possessed by a desire to sink my teeth into more than literature.
One of our first squabbles was about literature--less a debate and more like a passionate exchange of views--mine, an argument informed by years of academic training; his, stemming from decades of writing, a vocation grounded in the writer's craft. "I'm not doing too badly for an incompetent," he would often assert. And while I felt competitive, bent on winning the argument with him, his view was disarming. In the end, neither of us won; we both recognized that we would need one another, resolved to pull together for better or for worse. We began to share our limited resources, moved into a townhouse on Victoria Drive; saw ourselves obliged to sublet two of the bedrooms in order to come up with the monthly rent. Among our friends in Vancouver's East End were many artists whose passionate pursuits were in theatre, art and literature. The nineteen-nineties were a helter-skelter time. We were getting used to taking risks: Our house became an informal venue for poets, writers and sometimes musicians to come and present their work. The 'Living Room Series' was an idea hatched by poets Chad Norman and Catherine Owen, who organized these monthly gatherings. Ernest, who was also a visual artist, and whose paintings and woodblock prints hung on our walls, carved and painted a wooden shingle that announced the New Orphic Gallery, which would hang from the portico of our townhouse on such nights. Our circle of literary acquaintances kept expanding. Ernest continued painting. I took courses in darkroom and photography. Featured among the contributors to the inaugural issue of The New Orphic Review were many who had taken part in our monthly soirees. Although our abode was a far cry from Gertrude Stein's salons, the company of gifted writers inspired us, kept us busy, buoyant.
Submissions to The New Orphic Review began to arrive. We made room; managed to fit a bi-annual publishing schedule into our busy lives. Ernest took care of all the facets of publishing: he typed and photocopied, then collated individual pages; he did lay-out and designed the magazine covers; hand-bound each copy using glue and thread; took care of all correspondence with the authors, took care of distribution and accounting, too. The noble tasks of copy-editing and proofreading fell to me.
The selection of contributors for each issue of the NOR was not an arbitrary process; it evolved over time in an intuitive and organic fashion. The content was relevant and fresh, reflective of the varying influences of the times, the multitude of concerns, pursuits and intellectual preoccupations of the Editor-in-Chief, and to a lesser extent, mine. We pushed to meet the publication deadline every Spring and every Fall, the fury of production year after year usurping all our attention. Forty issues will soon be arrayed on the bookshelf in his upstairs office. Twenty years: Three in Vancouver, the rest in Nelson, B.C.
Many other interests in our messy lives have vied for our attention, but New Orphic Publishers has maintained a central place. Ernest to date is the author of forty-seven books. Hanging on our walls are paintings and photographs, salon-style. Our home, the abode of New Orphic Publishers and the New Orphic Gallery, is a Literary Landmark, due to the efforts of BC BookWorld's Alan Twigg. We can be located; We have internet presence; we are # 123 on the Literary Map of B.C.
Now that we are in the throes of readying the final issue for publication, I realize that what I have written is a far cry from the chronology I had once envisioned. It is a sketch, not a tidy, little history of The New Orphic Review. It is not a linear account, based on entries in my numerous notebooks, and neither is it a matter of sorting out cause and effect. From the moment I began to write this article, it changed-clearly a matter of observer affecting that which is observed. On any given day, I would recall new facets of the NOR's history. The manner of my recounting changed along with it. What I have written is impressionistic, mirroring the unique way in which memory works.
In view of the fact that the vast NOR chapter of our lives will soon reach a conclusion, I have discovered that significant moments are not unlike the luminous dots that speak of the presence of stars in a night sky. As such, they share a momentary connection, some relatedness only we can see. It is neither the result of linearity nor logic. These, the highlights in our shared publishing history, belong to a different order. They may speak of the contributors to our literary journal as affinities, as echoes, fractals in a Fibonacci spiral, even. The creative work that has filled the pages of The New Orphic Review over the past twenty years testifies to our interdependence: Our literary magazine is the physical manifestation of what Ernest sees as his ephemeral community. The community has essence; it endures, cannot be lost. The tongue-in-cheek summation of our mandate, I would say, is that New Orphic is the cornerstone of co-dependent publishing.
We find ourselves at a juncture--but we are not at the end. The adventure and the risks we take will continue in other ways.
I now conceive of "Endpiece" as a caboose-a railway wagon attached to the end of a train. The lights at the back of the caboose may point to the existence of the wagon, but they do not indicate the destination of the train.
Locate the future: What matters now is that the wind will shift and rain will come. The fire season will soon be over. And, yes--we all know the signal lantern will be raised. There will be waves good-bye; the train is bound for places yet unknown. New and exciting narratives will soon consume us, and as per usual, the train moves on.
[BCBW 2018]
Articles: 1 Article for this author
Slaves or Infidels: A Review of Ernest Hekkanen’s Heretic
Review
Heretic, by Ernest Hekkanen, came out in 2005 and was virtually ignored by the scholarly and intellectual community, largely because the sharp and perhaps perhaps disturbing illustrations he uses to share specific principles with his readership. He goads the reader into entertaining his ideas with astute examples drawn from current political follies that tend to offend the faint of heart. But Hekkanen's book isn't particularly about current politics or about individuals' historic inabilities to extract their heads from the sands in which they've voluntarily buried them. Ernest Hekkanen's book is about writing.
Ernest Hekkanen has completed thirty-six books to date, clearly one of the most prolific authors of our time. An outspoken social critic, he was born and grew up on the west coast and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, to avoid the draft in the 1960s. In B.C., he worked as a handyman to make enough money to sustain his writing. He is currently the editor of the New Orphic Review and a full-time writer.
The title of the text, Heretic, operates, in the words that Margrith Schraner attributes to Hekkanen himself, like a handle onto which the reader can grab, like a device to port the text about (see Schraner's forthcoming The Reluctant Author: The Life and Literature of Ernest Hekkanen, ISBN 1-894842-10-3). The handle, or device, forms the initial link between text and reader. As with much of Hekkanen's work, the title isn't like a label such as "Corn Flakes"; on a box of cereal placed there to announce for certain the contents of the vessel. Hekkanen's titles are meant to be unpacked more like suitcases. "CMX"; on my luggage tag is not telling anyone what's in the bag; instead it's revealing where it and thus I am going. Unpacking the suitcase, one will discover what I need at my destination. Such is Heretic: through an unpacking of the text, the reader discovers something about writing in a serious fashion as a seasoned author would tell it. One will also learn how the seasoned author came to think thus of writing.
So what does Hekkanen think a heretic is? He opens the book with an anecdote in which he immediately sets the tone of the work. In a lecture he gave at a Canadian University, he opened the lecture by announcing that he was a heretic. Then he asked the audience what indeed was a heretic. The audience shared the common definition, which he shares: "that a heretic is someone who practices religious heresy or doesn't believe in what is generally accepted."; According to Hekkanen, "that is what the word, 'heretic' has come to mean . . . [but] the word 'heretic' came to us from the Greek via the Latin and originally it meant 'able to choose.' So when heretics are burned at the stake or otherwise persecuted, the ones doing the persecuting are telling us that we don't have the right to choose . . ."; (11).
Hekkanen goes on to announce in the subsequent passage that he is also an infidel, a non-believer, one who doesn't believe in only one tale. He doesn't, he says, "readily lend . . . [his] credulity to other people's stories. . . . The reader's credulity is what you will be playing with when you tell a story"; (12). Here, Hekkanen reiterates advice given to novice writers in hundreds or even thousands of classrooms across North America each day. But his reiteration of the advice is done in a voice that rasps. Clearly, it is the business of an author to convince the reader to suspend disbelief and to commit to the plausibility of the story. Were he to stop there, his book would be standard, but Ernest Hekkanen's work is anything but standard and Hekkanen is anything but a standard writer (if indeed there is any such thing).
Instead, Hekkanen's work asks the reader to step out of the commonplace, to think outside the box, to read against the grain. He goads the reader to reach beyond the easy narratives we've come to rely on in our affluent Western culture and to dig deep within ourselves to think critically and to write substantively. He challenges us to do better and to be better than we would be if we were left with only the voices of the larger narratives that are employed to placate us and allow us to voluntarily remain "slaves"; to masters of the modern world.
He prefaces the text thus:
The best slave is the one who will rise early in the morning, voluntarily put on leg irons and go forth to join an army of similarly enslaved men and women who will then do the master's bidding, without demonstrating the slightest sign of disaffection, let alone rebellion. (7)
His work, in the vein of Finnish North Americans since the onset of their immigration in the late 1800s, is critical of givens and isms, and it will not accept pat answers. Politically, he is in the class of writers such as Earl Nurmi for his insistence on introspection and on criticism of the current social order, but he lacks Nurmi's certainty in any answers. His accuracy of detail reminds me of the poetry of Stephen Kuusisto, but Hekkanen's narrative is blatantly more provocative in terms of its political implications and the attitude with which it is offered. His knowledge of literature, philosophy, and the isms he critiques rests clearly on careful research and deep thought.
Finally, the Finnishness of his work is as subtle as Finnishness is in the work of Judith Minty and Suzanne Matson, none of whom comment on being Finnish and all of whom enact Finnishness though the essence of Finnishness, or the ethnic Finnishness, of the characters in their works.
Ernest Hekkanen's work isn't going to make you happy, but it will jolt you out of your isms and the lethargy induced by the grand received narratives we have inherited. Either that, or it will make you really angry. For sure, it is not a book to be taken lightly. But if you follow his advice about writing, you will probably see improvement in your prose.
You can get a copy of the text from New Orphic Publishers, 706 Mill Street, Nelson, British Columbia, V1L 4S5, CANADA. The Canadian Telephone is (250) 354-0494 and the FAX is (250) 352-0743.The cover price is $18.00, the ISBN is 1-894842-08-1, and the book, Heretic, is well worth the cost.
-- by Beth L. Virtanen, PhD
Beth L. Virtanen