John Brisbane
After serving as a captain in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve Force – including a stint in Kandahar, Afghanistan – Matt Lennox published his first short story collection, Men of Salt, Men of Earth, in 2009. His debut novel, The Carpenter, a literary thriller, was published in 2012. His latest novel, Knucklehead, about a small-town bouncer who gets in over his head, comes out this month.
What's the best advice you've ever received?
I think some of the best advice I ever heard comes from Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan. The song is full of pretty good tips – how we don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, how we ought to avoid scandals and wearing sandals, how we shouldn't follow leaders, how we should watch the parking meters and how we might want to consider joining the army if all else fails. I don't think any of this advice is going to make you richer, but it'll certainly add to your character if you follow it.
What scares you as a writer, and why?
As a writer, I'm scared of all the same egotistical nonsense that every other writer is – bad reviews, bad sales, harsh criticism, or … terror of terrors … irrelevance. But I try to keep these fears in perspective. There's not much I can do about them, so why worry? I guess what really frightens me is the whole process of telling a story. You're putting something out there that gestated in the darkest recesses of your brain. Once it's out there, it can't be taken back. It doesn't matter if no one ever reads it. It's out there and it's a part of you and you know it.
If aliens landed on Earth, which book would you give them to teach them about humanity?
I think I would put My War Gone By, I Miss It So, by Anthony Loyd into the aliens' appendages. If not My War Gone By, then maybe Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends And Influence People. In either case – whether the mass slaughter of one group of people by another or the grandfather of insipid self-actualization nonsense – I think the aliens would be forced to conclude that humanity is best left alone.
Who's your favourite villain in literature, and why?
My favourite villain would have to be Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Admittedly, the nurse-as-harridan stereotype has gotten pretty old, but I think Ratched's true villainy is in her representation of an implacable, Kafkaesque administration. In that context, she reminds me somewhat of the real life Adolf Eichmann. Evil is no more terrifying than when it is banal and bureaucratic. Randle P. McMurphy got lobotomized in the end, just as Winston Smith was made to love Big Brother. What chance do the rest of us have?
What's the best death scene in literature?
Death is tricky business in literature, especially because our literary tradition has a major preoccupation with resurrection. So apparent death, also known as comic-book death, has become a go-to concept. The beloved character dies, and the reader is pulled through the attendant emotional gauntlet, but then the beloved character returns and triumphs. Never mind Jesus – the apparent death has been done with great success with Superman, Spock and Sherlock Holmes. Personally, I think it's cheap to do death like this. Death needs to be final. Death needs to tear a part of you away and not give it back. With that in mind, for me, the death of the father in The Road was the most powerful death of recent memory. But one summer at the cottage when I was a kid, my mother gave me William Armstrong's Sounder to read. I would have to say the death of the father in that story, followed shortly after by the titular dog crawling under the porch and breathing his last, was a lot for my young mind to contend with. In a way that's good, I think. It's hard for a child to read about true death, but I'd say it's a necessary introduction to the world.