Wiebe grapples with death.Fernando Morales/The Globe and Mail
Rudy Wiebe is the author of more than 20 works of fiction, non-fiction, and drama. An Officer of the Order of Canada, Wiebe is also a two-time recipient of the Governor General's Literary Award, and winner of both the the Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize and the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. His latest novel, Come Back, looks at the aftermath of a suicide.
Why did you write your new book?
My "reason" for writing Come Back is stated perfectly by Soviet writer Andrei Platonov: "Life is short, there is not enough time to forget everything."
What's the best advice you've ever received?
From my MA thesis adviser Professor F. M. Salter in 1959. I wanted to write a thesis on Shakespeare and war, and he responded, "Yes, yes, you could certainly write a good thesis about Shakespeare – in fact, hundreds of people could – but, perhaps only you could write a good novel about Mennonites on the Canadian prairie." So I tried to do that.
Which historical period do you wish you'd lived through, and why?
Sometimes I long for that time before the invention of the steam engine; when the fastest a human being could travel was on a running horse; when nothing was "instant" except the human eye and ear and mind and soul.
What agreed-upon classic do you despise?
Not despise, but deeply dislike: Moby-Dick. It's so saturated with violence, hatred, revenge, brutality towards humans and all nature. What we see and hear forever in the daily world news.
Which fictional character do you wish you'd created?
Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov. Then I would have had the imagination to write the most brilliant indictment of human nature – as in Ivan's poem "The Grand Inquisitor" – and, for a conclusion, been able to heal every reader of that indictment with a gentle kiss on the forehead.
Which fictional character do you wish you were?
After a lifetime of reading, there are too many to list; in occasional moments of understanding I wish I were Gimpel in Isaac Bashevis Singer's folktale, Gimpel the Fool.
This interview has been condensed and edited.