Books – Page 33

A novel born of heartbreak

Nathan Englander will be in Vancouver on Oct. 22 to discuss his latest novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth, at a salon hosted by the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. (photo from Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival)

You won’t have to travel to the centre of the earth to meet award-winning, bestselling American author Nathan Englander. On the afternoon of Sunday, Oct. 22, he will be in Vancouver for a writers salon hosted by the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival.

The Jewish Independent spoke to Englander by phone last week. He had just arrived in Seattle by train, his flight there having been canceled. In the midst of a tour for his latest novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), he spoke to the JI between back-to-back events.

Englander’s novel is a compelling read in which he explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via five characters. To simply quote from the publishers, who sum it up succinctly: “A prisoner in a secret cell. The guard who has watched over him a dozen years. An American waitress in Paris. A young Palestinian man in Berlin who strikes up an odd friendship with a wealthy Canadian businessman. And the General, Israel’s most controversial leader, who lies dying in a hospital, the only man who knows of the prisoner’s existence.”

Each of these characters is fascinating, and Englander displays a remarkable talent for being able to put himself inside people’s heads, to clearly and realistically explain their feelings, their motivations. The characters both set events in motion and are carried along by events out of their control. One of the main characters, “the General,” lies in a coma and yet Englander fully develops him as a living, breathing human being.

The General is obviously based on former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who died in 2014 after having been in a coma since 2006. Englander’s character is a large man, he has been in a coma for years, he once ruled the country and was a tough, controversial military figure (“an unrelenting warrior”), his wife was named Lily, one of his sons was shot and killed, etc., etc. Nonetheless, Englander was adamant that the character not be seen as Sharon, but as “inspired” by him.

Englander said he knew people would come “locked and loaded with [their] politics to this story…. I thought it was really important that, wherever the parallels are [from] one reality to my fictional reality, that my general be his own character … so that I could fully empathize and fully get into his head. Even for me, I needed to build my own person, whatever the warring personal parallels are.”

Reading Dinner at the Center of the Earth, one does get the impression that Englander was trying to sort out his own views about the conflict, rather than make any pronouncements or come down on any particular side.

“It was imperative to me that this not be didactic and not be a big lecture,” he said. “I have a 500-page version of the book that I cut in half. I just wanted it to be story-driven and character-driven, for people to be able to enter into the discussion or to reflect on where they entered the book and where they left it, on their own positions.”

For his part, he said he’s learned a lot about the book from being on the road. One of his first tour events was with fellow writer Jonathan Safran Foer, who commented on the parallels between the dinner of the book’s title and a dinner that takes place between the guard and the prisoner; an aspect that Englander hadn’t considered. “I wish I had been smart enough to consciously think of it,” he said, “but the subconscious takes care of that for you.”

While Englander insists that “there’s no position in this book,” one woman, after a tour event, argued that it takes “a position on peace,” that it’s hopeful about the prospect. From this and other exchanges, Englander admitted, “I really do believe that the more it [peace] seems impossible, the more I believe we have to make it possible.” But, he said, about writing any messages into the book, “I can’t tell you how much of it was conscious intent versus subconscious work. For me, all my conscious intent was this idea of it to land on no side, for us to explore.”

For Englander, two lessons learned from being a reader himself helped shape this novel. One is that a well-functioning book represents a shared experience between an author and a reader. “I used my brain to write it and then there’s this physical thing that you can pick up and read,” he said, and so, in writing Dinner, he fought “against all punditry and ‘mansplaining’ and lecturing and … didactic” inclinations.

The other aspect he keeps in mind while writing, he said, is all the unanswered questions he had as a boy growing up in a religious environment. “It’s the books where people were brave enough to wrestle with the questions that changed me. All of the books that changed my life, that saved me, none of them had answers, they just were by authors who truly were willing to wrestle with terrifying questions. So, for me, I really wanted to structure this [novel] to swing back and forth and back and forth…. I wanted to mirror the circles of the conflict, these unending cycles.”

The story of Dinner at the Center of the Earth had been percolating since Sharon became prime minister of Israel in 2001. About the Second Intifada and Sharon’s election win, Englander said, “That was my first adult political heartbreak of that size…. All those years of work [on peace], it was right there.”

The more distant we get from peace, he said, the more “you may think it’s impossible, but it was really right there for the taking. I just couldn’t shake it. I was desperate to explore this unending conflict. So, yes, it may be just the tiniest glimmer of optimism [in the novel] but I do think it’s optimistic in the end, however dark some of the turns are.”

He hasn’t been writing the novel for 16 years, of course. He had the idea and needed a structure for it, which he found on his last book tour, while in Israel. The front page of the newspaper he was reading had a story on “Prisoner X, this Australian guy [who had a life] so similar to my life in a lot of ways – maybe he got more Zionism and I got more Bible but [he was] a religious, Anglo Jew who ends up moving to Israel.” This man not only “adopted an ideology” but joined Mossad, did “scary deep undercover stuff and then becomes a traitor.” His situation made Englander wonder, “What would it take to flip someone for empathy, out of feeling for the other side? That’s what would interest me,” so Prisoner X became Dinner’s Prisoner Z.

The other notion about Prisoner X that intrigued Englander was that the public only found out about Prisoner X’s existence after the man hanged himself. “He only lived in the moment he died, and there was no X and no cell until the moment he hanged himself.”

Englander’s imagination seems to know no bounds. His stories and novels are set in various countries (Russia, Israel, United States, Argentina, to name a handful) and his characters range from an Orthodox rabbi who supplements his income by being a mall Santa Claus – one of the many people readers meet in Englander’s first book, the collection of short stories For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) – to the General of Dinner, his fourth book. Englander is also working on a second play because, he joked, with 10 years between his first and second book, he had to tell people he “wrote book” for a living and, since his first play in 2012, he’s been writing “books and play.”

One theme that runs through all his work, regardless of form, topic or setting, he said, is that they explore “grey space, or Schrödinger’s cats, multiple realities.”

“As the books go by, I see that I’m clearly … obsessed with this grey space, which I think is probably from having a black-and-white education and growing up in a black-and-white reality,” he said. “Especially now, I can’t understand people who can’t see the other side.”

By way of example, he said, “I learned that in Israel, where I was a Jew living in Jerusalem, whose holy site was the Temple Mount … it became clear to me this wasn’t a disagreement, or something on a spectrum, that my Palestinian neighbour, she is living in Al-Quds and Haram al-Sharif is her holy site. We were living in the same physical space but in literally separate realities.”

This is also the case in the United States now, he added. “There are regular citizens that, because of the dual realities we now have here … you could show them two pictures of an inauguration, one with more people and one with less, and you’d have regular folks say, yes, the picture with less people has more people in it. That’s not an opinion, that’s inhabiting a different reality.”

Human beings can make anything happen, said Englander. “We’ve sent people to the moon and brought them back,” he said, and our cellphones have far more power than did any Apollo mission. So, you want to make peace? “Everyone knows the math there. Don’t anybody pretend they don’t know who’s going to trade what. There are some very minor, tweakable things. Don’t tell me everybody doesn’t know what they need to do to make that peace happen tomorrow, if they wanted it to happen.”

Englander immerses himself in his work. For The Ministry of Special Cases (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), a novel about Argentina’s Dirty War, he did years of research. “You need to own that world,” he said, in order “to drop my own ministry on top of that city [Buenos Aires].” He said it is akin to being an artist in, say, Cubism: “You need to know how to paint before you can put both eyes on one side of the face.”

With Dinner at the Center of the Earth, Englander said he was returning to familiar ground, which required much less research.

“I’ve had so many different sides of the experience, from the Jerusalem of the Bible that I had my whole life, to living in Israel in the First Intifada to getting a degree in Judaic studies to living in Israel for another five years, to watching the news a million hours a day to reading the papers.” He’s also on the faculty of New York University, which has taken him to cities like Paris and Berlin, both of which are integral places in his latest novel. “I was very interested in exploring territories that felt like ‘my territories,’ including historical [ones],” he said.

For things he didn’t know, he sought advice, such as speaking to a doctor friend about what it means to be in a coma and learning about boats and the mechanics of sailing from people who knew about those things.

As for the writing of the book and how it came out, he said that he reworked the rough draft of the novel for almost a year, while he and his family were in Zomba, Malawi, where his wife, Rachel, was doing research for her PhD. “It was an extraordinary place for me to be, somewhere so far and so radically different from my own realities and where I’d lived…. It was a very special place from which to imagine these places and draw off memory.”

The pre-book festival salon will take place Oct. 22, 2-4 p.m., at a private residence (address will be given to ticket buyers). Tickets are $72, which includes copy of Dinner at the Center of the Earth and a reception. Visit jewishbookfestival.ca to reserve your place at the salon and for more information about this year’s festival, which takes place Nov. 25-30.

Leadership tips from Moses

Much has been written about Moses as a leader – a Google search for “Moses leader” yields more than 16 million results. However, in Religion and Contemporary Management: Moses as a Model for Effective Leadership, local community member Dr. Arthur Wolak not only explores what contemporary leaders (at least in title if not in fact) could learn from the man who led the Israelites out of slavery, but also examines how Moses’ traits and actions fit into different theories of leadership. Readers will learn as much about leadership in general as they will about Moses and, of course, will take away some pointers on how to improve their skills in this area.

It may or may not come as a surprise, but being a good leader is an awfully hard task, requiring a wide-ranging multitude of abilities. Add to that the importance of a person’s character, and it seems nigh impossible. There are no guarantees. Even if you master the top attributes of a good leader, you may not become one. Sure, you might be innovative, original, empathetic, humble, tenacious, attentive, ethical, patient and have a clear vision – that doesn’t mean people will necessarily follow you.

But there is hope to be found in reluctant, flawed Moses, even if he didn’t really exist. Whether or not one believes there was ever such a person in the world, Wolak notes, “there is still no denying Moses’ influence on Jewish identity, group leadership and Western civilization as a whole.” In addition to being the greatest prophet in Jewish tradition, Moses is a respected figure in Christianity and Islam, Wolak points out.

In the first few chapters of Religion and Contemporary Management, Wolak discusses the different types of leadership, how leadership and management differ, and the benefits and drawbacks of charisma. The next chapters focus on Moses and the ways in which he displayed empathy, possessed humility and was a visionary leader. He also knew his limitations and how to delegate. For example, explains Wolak, when Moses first objects to God choosing him to lead the Israelites, Moses says it’s because he is “slow of speech,” but God brings him round, assuring him that his brother, Aaron, speaks well and can be Moses’ spokesman.

Wolak puts some fun – and educational – twists on things, such as proposing that the Ten Commandments were God’s mission statement to the Jewish people and that Moses “assumed the role of biblical CEO, of sorts, because he became a leader entrusted with transforming God’s mission statement into a viable entity….” Wolak is also very clear that, despite his use of Moses as the model leader and the patriarchal aspects of the Torah and Judaism (and all religion, pretty much), excelling at leadership “is not gender based but built on good character and leadership abilities,” and that “there have been effective female leaders since biblical times.” He gives several examples of such women from the Tanakh and the modern era.

Another part of Wolak’s book that will particularly interest today’s readers is a nine-page section called “Modesty and Holiness,” which mainly contrasts real estate developer rivals Paul Reichmann and Donald Trump, who was not yet president when Wolak was writing his book.

While academic in style, Religion and Contemporary Management is accessible to lay readers. It is well researched and the analysis is well supported with evidence from religious texts, academics, theoreticians and a range of other voices, from Maimonides to Sigmund Freud and Winston Churchill. Published by Anthem Press (2016), the hardcover has an academic text price, at more than $100, but the Kindle version is only $30.50.

As Wolak concludes, “anyone who wishes to learn how to lead, and to learn what characteristics are beneficial for effective leadership, would do well to study the example of Moses.” Then all you need to find is the energy and wherewithal.

Trying to foster community

Two things will immediately strike readers of From the Outside In: Jewish Post & News Columns, 2015-2016 by Joanne Seiff – Seiff’s knowledge of Judaism and her empathy. She really knows her Jewish texts, as well as a thing or two about human nature. Yet, she doesn’t criticize from on high. She’s right in there in the muck, so to speak, not just making suggestions for others to carry out, but trying to play a positive role herself in whatever transformations she thinks might engage more Jews in Judaism and in community. Her heart is in the right place, and it shows.

Readers of the Jewish Independent were introduced to Seiff’s writing earlier this year, thanks to the JPN’s Bernie Bellan, who thought her work might be a good fit for the JI as well. He was correct. Her columns mix Torah lessons, everyday life moments and community-building ideas seamlessly, in an uplifting manner that invites contemplation rather than merely prescribing answers. She is not dogmatic, but rather is struggling herself to see what works in her and her community’s life.

While Seiff writes about the Winnipeg Jewish community, pretty much every issue she brings up – from involving younger congregants in synagogue life to getting more out of the weekly Torah portion to countering antisemitism to making communal activities more inclusive – can be found in our community. No doubt other communities will also see themselves in Seiff’s writing. And each of us will see a bit of ourselves, how we define our identity and how we move in the world.

And though you might not know it from her casual writing style and humble approach, Seiff has the education to back up her commentary. She has a master’s degree in religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s in education from the George Washington University; she earned her bachelor’s cum laude in Near Eastern studies and comparative literature from Cornell University. Even so, she doesn’t have all the answers, and she doesn’t pretend to. She calls on many sources, from Jewish traditions and writings, to rabbis who have visited her community with advice, to lessons she has learned from family (her parents and as a mother of twins), community members and others. She brings in her own experiences of living in places where there weren’t many Jews – Kentucky, for example – and that of being a relatively recent immigrant to Winnipeg. She and her husband moved to the city in 2009 and the title of her collection reflects this perspective. As she writes in the introduction, “As a newcomer to Canada, I often see things differently than someone who was born and raised in Winnipeg.”

There is a lightness and energy to Seiff’s writing, which makes the book easy to read, even though she’s tackling some heavy topics and, often, the lethargy of a well- and long-established communal structure. It takes a delicate touch to be constructively critical and not disrespectful to those who either helped set up or maintain the way things “always” have been done. Her solutions-oriented outlook and can-do attitude will inspire anyone who would like to see change but thinks that anything that’s well-established – from our identity, to our Jewish community, to our larger world – is immutable. We may not have a huge amount of control over most things in life, but there are ways in which we can make things better. For ideas of where to start, From the Outside In can be purchased online. To read more of her writing, visit joanneseiff.blogspot.ca.

It’s never too late to find love

It takes a brave, confident person to lay themselves bare before others, to openly analyze their choices in life and share what makes them happy, sad and concerned. In the essay collection Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic, local writer Max Roytenberg – with whom Jewish Independent readers should be familiar – is at turns funny, wistful, belligerent, humble, egotistical and sentimental. He’s everything we all are. In reading his stories, we learn about ourselves, as well.

The collection is divided into three parts – “Looking Back,” “Living the Life” and “Looking Forward.” In the first section, Roytenberg recounts stories from his childhood in Winnipeg, outlines the various jobs he had during his career and the cities in which he lived, and touches upon his first two marriages and some of their challenges. It ends with “The Kiss,” about how he – a widower in his early 70s by that time – finally managed to connect with the woman he had loved since his youth; she had long been an widow, too, and was about the same age. The second section is focused on their life together, and it is obvious from his writing that he is smitten and he is happy. While still upbeat and energetic in the third section, the pressure of time is ever-present, as he is now an octogenarian, and he is contemplating who he has become, what impact he has made in the world and how he should spend the rest of his life.

Roytenberg seems to be quite a character. He often refers to himself in the third person, as Maxie, and calls his wife Cookie, my Bride, rather than by her name. There are times when you want to pat him on the back – such as when he manages to push through a regulation change that was being held up by an official who may have been corrupt – and times when you want to shake him, such as when he is basically dismissive of a 28-year-long marriage. But then you want to hug him, because he stayed with and supported his second wife, Ruth, during her eight-year fight with cancer, and you want to jump for joy when he does make the move on his lifelong love, Cookie, and she says yes. By the third section, when he’s so honestly discussing whether he lived up to his own expectations, about winding down (though he also talks about the benefits of not having the time to dilly dally anymore), his children and grandchildren, his gratitude and what he might do tomorrow, it’s quite moving. He touches universal chords in many of his musings and, by the end of the book, you may or may not consider him a hero, but you’ll thank him for sharing a bit of himself with you. And maybe that bit will help you to see the hero in you.

Sandler a superb storyteller

Red Shoes for Rachel: Three Novellas, and its author, Boris Sandler. (photo from Syracuse University Press)

When I read and valued the unique style and flavour of Boris Sandler’s story “Studies in Solfege,” in Ezra Glinter’s anthology of short stories, Have I Got a Story for You, gathered from the Yiddish Forward, I wondered if there were any other fictions available in English by this talented, inventive writer. It was heartening and encouraging to see that, in the parentheses where age is given, there was no other number besides his year of birth. To my delight, I soon learned that Syracuse University Press was planning to issue Red Shoes for Rachel.

In talking about Yiddish writers, we usually are dealing with those long gone, like Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, Avraham Reisen or Chaim Grade – it is a distinct pleasure to review a book by a living Yiddish writer.

In Red Shoes for Rachel, we meet Sandler’s fellow Jews from Bessarabia. During the Second World War, the Jews there suffered under the Germans and the pro-German Romanian fascists. But then, soon after being liberated by the Red Army, they fell under the rule of rigorous Soviet dictatorship. In these three novellas, we meet perceptively drawn men, women and children as they live their bumpy lives and dream their hopes in the Soviet Union, in Israel and in the goldeneh medineh (golden land), Brooklyn, more specifically, Brighton Beach.

Sandler’s style, unlike that of most other writers in the Yiddish literary canon – almost all of whom write in the late 19th-, early-20th-century realistic style – hovers between realism and magic realism (think of writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino and Mario Vargas Llosa) with surprising effect. Time zones elide. Scenes shift, via recall, from years past to the present. Arching over this are believable, vibrant human beings who are vivified through description, dialogue and interior monologue.

From the first line of “Karolina-Bugaz” – “Bella woke from sleep as if she had been driven out of it” – one sees at once a writer who uses his tools – words – with verve and imagination. On the 30th anniversary of her marriage, Bella goes to a bakery to pick up a special cake she has ordered. But she comes home to find a note that her husband, Mark, has left her. He is now on a cruise, alone, and, on an island near where the ship has docked, he meets a young woman who has the same name as his wife.

In realism, a reader knows where he is, and which character is breathing in his presence. In magic realism, the borders between true and make believe are blurred and the reader is never really sure. Reality in such fiction is a slippery slope.

In the beginning of “Halfway Down the Road Back to You,” we see an 80-year-old woman in Israel preparing dozens of slices of dried white bread, which are scattered all over her apartment – she considers this an obligatory present when visiting.

The woman had spent 73 of her years in Beltsy, Bessarabia. For the past seven, she has lived in her small apartment in Nazareth, where there is a windowless security room stored with food, “just in case.” Both her children are abroad; there is no indication she has any friends, except for a twice-a-week aide. Via memories, we relive her days in the Romanian ghetto during the Second World War, where she risked being shot by slipping out once in awhile to beg for food for her family. It is only toward the end of the tale that we suspect she might be bringing all those crusts she has prepared into that security room, though we can’t be sure.

Red Shoes for Rachel contains one of the most beautiful and moving stories of middle-aged love I’ve ever read. Rachel, the only American-born protagonist in the collection, lives near the Coney Island boardwalk and selflessly tends to her wheelchair-bound mother. One day, when she bumps into Yasha, a divorced immigrant from Moldavia, her life turns around and achieves a spark. In separate chapters, we learn of Yasha’s Holocaust experiences and also those of Rachel’s parents. With delicacy and warmth, the relationship develops. By the end, the two lonely souls have formed a bond.

Occasionally, in translations of Yiddish literature, there is a wide gap between knowledge of Yiddish and knowledge of Yiddishkeit (Judaism), with errors regarding some obvious points in the latter. One story depicts “a Sabbath lunch with songs and putting on of phylacteries” (tefillin), which is done during morning prayers on weekdays and certainly not during lunch. Another has a mistranslation of the Hebrew/Yiddish exclamation, “Borukh Hashem,” which does not mean, “blessed be His name,” but “blessed be God” or, actually, “thank God.” Elsewhere, a woman “blesses the Sabbath candles.” Jewish women do not bless objects and, in this case, would recite a blessing to God over the candles. These comments aside, Barnet Zumoff’s translation is splendid, natural and effortless. It meets the gold standard of translation – reading this book one assumes the stories in it were written in English.

Read Red Shoes for Rachel and you will discover a superb storyteller, a modern master of prose.

Curt Leviant’s most recent books are the critically acclaimed novels King of Yiddish and Kafka’s Son.

Meet award-winning artists

Seeking Refuge, written by Irene Watts and illustrated by Kathryn Shoemaker, has been shortlisted for the 2017 Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature. Published by Tradewind Books, the graphic novel is one of the three finalists in the children’s/young adult category.

While this year’s Vine winners will be announced Oct. 3 at a luncheon in Toronto, Vancouverites can meet Watts and Shoemaker later this month at Word Vancouver, and again at the Vancouver Writers Festival in October. The multiple-award-winners, who are both founding members of the Children’s Writers and Illustrators of British Columbia Society, have worked together on several publications, including Good-bye Marianne, a graphic novel based on Watts’ play and subsequent novel of the same name, which also included Shoemaker illustrations.

In Good-bye Marianne, readers meet Marianne Kohn. Set in Berlin in 1938, a week after Kristallnacht, the 11-year-old struggles to understand and cope with the increasing restrictions placed on Jews in Nazi Germany, and the fierce antisemitism she and her family encounter, with a couple of exceptions. The story begins with Marianne not being allowed into her school – all of the Jewish students have been prohibited from attending. As well, her father has disappeared. The situation, as we know from history, worsens, and her mother makes the heartrending decision to send Marianne with “a group of 200 children who are leaving for homes in England,” one of the first groups to be rescued in the Kindertransport.

Seeking Refuge sees Marianne safely to London, arriving Dec. 2, 1938. While protected from physical harm in her new country, Marianne does not escape antisemitism and poor treatment.

In an interview with CBC, Watts commented on Shoemaker’s choice of medium for Seeking Refuge, noting how the grey of the pencil was so well-suited to the story.

“Seeking Refuge is a darker, sadder story, taking place in a time of blackouts, black-and-white films, coal-foggy London, especially the winter months, a gloomy time and place,” said Shoemaker in an interview with the Jewish Independent. “In Good-bye Marianne, Marianne is happier than in Seeking Refuge because she is with family, her home, her country, her language. So, yes, the backgrounds are light, often white. She is anxious about her being sent away but she is not yet sad about it. She is not yet a displaced refugee.”

The possibility of using Seeking Refuge as a way in which to teach younger readers about the current refugee crisis has not gone unnoticed by reviewers and interviewers.

“Stories, in whatever genre, help us to discover more about our place in the world and who we are,” Watts told the Independent. “Immersing ourselves in the lives of fictional characters and their stories, we gain insight of how others live.” While acknowledging that readers will “take whatever message they are ready to understand from the books they read,” she added, “Marianne’s story, though set in the past, is still a familiar one. There are many refugees in the world. Seeking Refuge concerns one child, and how she responds to losing home, friends, family, birthplace, language, culture. In reading about Marianne, a reader may wonder how he would cope in this situation; maybe respond with more kindness and understanding to anyone struggling to make a new life.”

Marianne’s story is similar to – but not the same as – that of Watts, who was educated in England and Wales after her escape from Berlin via the second rescue train in December 1938. Skipping ahead 30 years, she and her husband moved to Canada in 1968, she said, “to give our children a better future.” They immigrated to Alberta.

A playwright and director for Theatre in Education and a drama teacher and consultant in England, Watts taught drama in Hobbema (now Maskwacis), where they lived for a short time before moving to Edmonton. In Edmonton, she was director of Citadel on Wheels and Wings, a children’s touring company that traveled all over Alberta. “We even took our shows to schools in the Northwest Territories,” she said, noting that, among the company’s alumni are Jackson Davies and the late Susan Wright.

“After a few years,” said Watts, “my late husband accepted a position in Vancouver and our four children and I followed. This was in 1976. My base was in White Rock, B.C., and I moved to Vancouver in 2000.”

That Watts likes to write in different genres is clear from the way in which Seeking Refuge came into being.

“Good-bye Marianne began life as a play, which premièred at the Norman Rothstein Theatre in 1994,” Watts explained. “It was produced by Carousel Theatre, and toured widely. It has had many productions, both in Canada and the U.S.A., and will be touring with Theatre New Brunswick for three months in the spring of 2018. I had been a playwright long before I became a novelist. I decided to write the novel because there was still much to say beyond the confines of the play. Kathy Lowinger, then publisher of Tundra Books, rescued the manuscript from the slush pile, and published it in 1998.

“I received countless letters from children, wanting to know what happens next, and so completed both the novel and the play Remember Me, on which Seeking Refuge is based. The trilogy, which ends with Finding Sophie, was later published in an omnibus edition, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Kindertransport, as Escape from Berlin.”

For readers anticipating a possible third graphic novel, Watts told the Independent she has “no plans to write about Marianne and Sophie again.”

Shoemaker and Watts collaborated on Watts’ first book for Tradewind, A Telling Time, “which places the story of Queen Esther and the story of Purim in three time frames: modern-day Canada, Nazi-occupied Vienna and the biblical era of Persia. So,” said Watts, “when Kathie told me she had read my play Good-bye Marianne and suggested that it would make an interesting graphic novel, I needed no persuasion, and together we embarked on our next project – a new genre for me. Since then, we have done several other books together, for both Tundra and Tradewind Books.”

A Telling Time, which Shoemaker described as “a picture book for older children about the parallel stories of Queen Esther and how she saves her people and a 1939 secret Purim party,” was recognized by the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany, with a 2006 White Raven special mention.

“For that book,” said Shoemaker, who teaches children’s literature at the University of British Columbia, “I did a huge amount of research. As well, Irene shared many resources with me.

“While I was illustrating A Telling Time,” she said, “I was working on my MA in children’s literature at UBC. Instead of doing an academic thesis, I wrote a graphic novel. During the process of finishing it up, Irene asked me what it was like to write a graphic novel and I told her that, for her, it would be a snap, as it is very much like writing a play or screenplay, as you write primarily dialogue, and, similarly to writing a play scene by scene, a graphic novel is written panel by panel. In response to my answer, Irene told me that Good-bye Marianne had been a play before it was a novel.”

Shoemaker said she drew up several pages of Good-bye Marianne for Watts to send to Tundra as a proposal for a graphic novel. “It was about to have its 10th anniversary, so it was good timing,” said Shoemaker. “Tundra had never done a graphic novel before but they agreed to it.”

Graphic novels were still a relatively new phenomenon at that time. “Other than Chester Brown’s Louis Riel and books for adults, there were almost none,” said Shoemaker. “It was a bit of challenge working with an editor who did not understand the form and also who didn’t seem to understand how closely Irene and I work.

“You will often hear that editors like to keep writers and illustrators apart. I hate that. Irene and I work closely on everything that we do.”

Their creative process begins with Watts writing a rough draft. “She doesn’t number the panels but she describes all the key actions she wants to see occur along with the dialogue,” explained Shoemaker. “From that version, I go back into the manuscript to visualize the sequence of panels. When I do that, I create panel numbers and add in additional panels that may be close-ups, wordless images and additional panels to handle complex conversations. After I’ve done that, I begin a visual dummy, drawing out the entire book panel by panel. When that is complete, I sit down with Irene and go through it panel by panel. As we go through it, we decide what stays, what goes and what more we might need. The best thing about our working together is that we highly respect each other’s ideas and we both listen, consider and change things without any kind of ownership because we consider the work ours. It is our book, not mine, not hers, but ours.”

Watts and Shoemaker will be at Word Vancouver on Sept. 24, 12:45 p.m., at the main branch of Vancouver Public Library in the South Plaza (the Quay) and the Writers Fest on Oct. 18, 1 p.m., at Revue Stage on Granville Island. For more information on both of these festivals and for tickets to the latter ($17), visit wordvancouver.ca and writersfest.bc.ca, respectively.

Atheism has a long history

The title of a book review in Biblical Archaeology Review caught my eye, “Ancient atheism.” I read, “A common assumption is that atheism – a lack of belief in gods and the supernatural – is a recent phenomenon, brought on by the advent of science during the Enlightenment.” I ordered the book immediately: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World by Tim Whitmarsh (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015).

Bumbling, staggering, veering and lurching: these are the words that come to mind when I think of my path towards a Jewish identity. As the product of a secular household, my only contact with Judaism was my brother’s bar mitzvah and a yearly Passover seder at a family friend’s home. I was born in 1939, the beginning of the Second World War, yet the word “Holocaust” was never mentioned during my childhood or adolescence. The topic of God was not broached. The exception to the rule was that my brother and I were sent for seven summers to a Jewish camp in the Adirondacks, in New York state. There, we became familiar with Friday night services, which included singing Jewish songs and a few prayers in Hebrew.

Fast forward to 1970, after 12 years of marriage, the birth of four sons and a sincere attempt at keeping a kosher home (it lasted three years), creating Passover seders and Chanukah parties and the decision to prepare our sons for bar mitzvahs, my husband and I divorced.

I enrolled immediately in courses at Concordia University. English and French literature introduced me to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. This led to a bachelor’s in French literature, which was followed by many courses in a master’s program called The History and Philosophy of Religion.

My search was on. I was determined to find out what religiosity and devotion to God entailed. I studied Judaism (modern and medieval), Jewish mysticism, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. I wrote scholarly papers on these subjects. Later, I would take up the study of Modern Hebrew at McGill University. Upon moving to Vancouver, I studied Biblical Hebrew for three years and enrolled in the Judaic studies program at the University of British Columbia. Jewish law, Jewish ethics, Proto-Hebrew, I loved it all; but I was no closer to feeling comfortable during the High Holiday services at any synagogue.

I tried Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal congregations. I could not make that leap of faith required to pray to God. The secular humanist group had replaced Hebrew with Yiddish. I wanted my Hebrew! The result is that, every year, during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I felt uneasy, out-of-step and different.

I continued studying Modern Hebrew. I became editor of Jewish Seniors Alliance’s magazine, Senior Line. Studying, writing, volunteering and participating in the Jewish community were rewarding and gratifying activities, yet I felt like a second-class Jew. Was there something wrong with me?

Then along came Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World. As the May/June 2017 Biblical Archaeology Review notes, “In clear prose, Whitmarsh explores the history of atheism from its beginnings in ancient Greece in the eighth century BCE through the fourth century CE, when Christianity was adopted as the state religion of the Roman Empire. Whitmarsh says up-front that he is not interested in proselytizing atheism – but rather in studying its first thousand years. He argues that the history of atheism is an issue of human rights because denying the history of a tradition helps to delegitimize it and paint it as ‘faddish.’”

In reading this book, I came to understand, as Stephen Greenblatt is quoted on the back cover as saying, that “atheism is as old as belief. Skepticism did not slowly emerge from a fog of piety and credulity. It was there, fully formed and spoiling for a fight, in the bracing, combative air of ancient Athens.” And I agree with Susan Jacoby’s comments – also cited on the back cover – that it “is a pure delight to be introduced to people who questioned the supernatural long before modern science provided physical evidence to support the greatest insights of human reason.”

I devoured Battling the Gods, relishing the research and the historical insights. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Whitmarsh states that “this book thus represents a kind of archaeology of religious skepticism.…This loss of consciousness of that classical heritage [the long history of atheism] is what has allowed the ‘modernist mythology’ to take root. It is only through profound ignorance of classical tradition that anyone ever believed that 18th-century Europeans were the first to battle the gods.”

Whitmarsh writes, “The Christianization of the Roman Empire put an end to serious philosophical atheism for over a millennium. The word itself, indeed, acquired an additional meaning, which was wholly negative: rather than the rational critique of theism as a whole, it came to mean simply the absence of belief in the Christian god.”

With Whitmarsh’s sentence, “The conclusion seems inevitable that the violent ‘othering’ as atheists of those who hold different religious views was overwhelmingly a Judeo-Christian creation,” my self-respect was restored. I now understand that I come from a longstanding tradition of atheists. My beliefs have history and credulity behind them. I will continue to study Hebrew, write, volunteer and participate in the Jewish community. In accepting my skepticism, I join the minds and hearts of the ancient Greek and Roman skeptics and atheists who came before me.

Dolores Luber, a retired psychotherapist and psychology teacher, is editor of Jewish Seniors Alliance’s Senior Line magazine and website (jsalliance.org). She blogs for yossilinks.com and writes movie reviews for the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library website.

Delving into the past

Lillian Boraks-Nemetz’s newest book, Mouth of Truth (Ekstasis Editions, 2017) is not an easy, escape-from-reality read, but it’s an interesting and important read. What does it mean to be a survivor? How does one person’s trauma affect those around them? Is healing possible? These are but a few of the many questions that Mouth of Truth elicits.

The novel is based on the experiences of Boraks-Nemetz, who is a Holocaust survivor. Born in Warsaw, Poland, she escaped the Warsaw Ghetto, and survived the war by hiding under a false identity.

“My life’s story is, of course, similar to the book’s,” Boraks-Nemetz told the Independent. “I suffered in childhood, in adolescence, girlhood and womanhood. It is only now, in my senior years, that I have found some degree of peace.”

The protagonist of Mouth of Truth is Batya, who still struggles with Beata (Bea), her wartime identity, even though she has been in Canada for decades. Her Canadian-born husband, Joseph, and their children, Sam and Miriam, have no idea of the trauma with which she is attempting to deal. She drinks to suppress her more feisty Bea personality and their memories – not only of the ghetto, but of abuse by the man entrusted with her care, and others. Though this method of coping isn’t working, Batya manages to keep her nose above water until she accompanies her friend Antonia on a visit to see Antonia’s brother in prison. The visit unleashes recollections of her tragic childhood and Batya can no longer hide from herself or her past. She must confront her dueling identities – and rumours about her father.

Batya finds out that her father might have been one of the Jewish police in the ghetto; not only that, but one who did some awful things, including helping the Nazis round up Jews for deportation. On his deathbed, her father apologizes. But for what? Batya’s mother will not talk about what happened in the ghetto and Batya must find out for herself of what her father was guilty, if anything.

The investigation, as well as Batya’s healing, requires that she leave her family and home in Vancouver. She travels first to Toronto, then to Italy and Poland. In Italy, she meets Grisha, with whom she has an affair, and experiences passion and desire. She initially confuses her feelings with love, but comes to realize the difference as she and Grisha travel together in Poland.

Between her research in Toronto and in Europe, Batya learns much about her father. She is also helped by her mother. When Batya first arrives in Toronto, her mother – who has never wanted to talk about the war – sends Batya a package of her father’s writings. Batya receives a second package when she returns from Europe.

With the first package, her mother writes, “I had always thought that because you were a mere child when all that happened to us, it would not touch you. Could I have been wrong?” Her mother also clearly states, “I have chosen to forget the past and start a new life. I don’t want to go back there either.”

In the note accompanying the second package, her mother concedes, “By shielding you, I may have done more harm than good. No matter what you might think of your father, he was a good man.” She also writes, “It never occurred to me before that I owe you the truth. Maybe I have kept secrets from you for too long.”

Batya, too, has secrets. Though she tried several times, she was not able to tell her children what happened to her during the war. As for her father’s actions, she had no idea herself, until Antonia told her the rumours. In addition to being the bearer of the news, however, Antonia opens the door for Batya to start facing her past, connecting Batya with the son of the woman who supposedly witnessed the actions of Batya’s father.

It is through her relationship with the son, Julian, who lives in Toronto, that Batya comes to tell her story – and start living. He encourages her to give a survivor testimony – “Survivors are no longer silent,” he tells her – and she does. Despite her fears, and with Julian’s support, she invites her children to watch her videotaped testimony. Afterward, they have a much-needed, overdue discussion. “One or even two conversations cannot erase the years of accumulated unhappiness and poor communication,” acknowledges Batya. “But today was a start.”

To read the first chapter of Mouth of Truth, visit lillianboraks-nemetz.com. To buy the book ($26.95), visit ekstasiseditions.com. Boraks-Nemetz will read from the novel and participate in a Q&A on Sept. 14, 2 p.m., at Waldman Library. She will also be participating in this year’s Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, which takes place Nov. 25-30.

Brown’s model for success

Journalist Jesse Brown takes a humourous look at his homeland in The CANADALAND Guide to Canada (Published in America), written with Vicky Mochama and Nick Zarzycki.

Jesse Brown has emerged in the last few years as an important voice in the Canadian media landscape, hosting popular podcasts on media and current affairs. Brown’s CANADALAND, which started as a single weekly podcast about Canadian media hosted by him, has expanded to include a permanent staff producing a full website and a roster of podcasts covering politics, arts, media and current affairs.

A former CBC documentary producer and host, Brown is most known for breaking the Jian Ghomeshi scandal in the Toronto Star with Kevin Donovan in 2014. But it’s Brown’s media startup and podcast roster that will likely make a more lasting mark.

Brown’s pugnacious self-assurance sometimes teeters on the edge of the obnoxious, but his dogged fair-mindedness mostly outweighs small annoyances. More importantly, his content fills a necessary niche: media analysis that lacerates Canada’s haughty self-image, provocative critiques of specific people and organizations, and deep dives into under-covered Canadian stories. The mixture of salaciousness and nerdiness create an alchemy that puts the listener in the thick of critical conversations in Canada.

photo - Jesse Brown — Jesse Brown *(photo from twitter.com/@jessebrown)*

In addition to the growing news organization, Brown hasn’t lost touch with humour, arguably the way that he gained some of his first public exposure, through elaborate jokes and pranks in his university years. His book The CANADALAND Guide to Canada (Published in America), with Vicky Mochama and Nick Zarzycki, came out this spring. It’s an irreverent rundown of Canadian history, politics and social mores, including a ranking of how f-able Canadian prime ministers are and a cover illustration of Drake tenderly embracing a moose.

Brown can easily pass as a generic Canadian. But he is a Jew – a fact he neither hid nor discussed until recently. In an episode of CANADALAND this spring, Brown highlighted his Jewish identity in a discussion with members of the Jewish ethnic press about being Jewish in public, given attacks on Jewishness from both the left and the right. The CANADALAND website has begun to cover additional Jewish media stories, including the circumstances of the recent resignation of left-leaning columnist Mira Sucharov from the Canadian Jewish News.

The Independent interviewed Brown recently to ask him about his business, Jewish media in general and his new book.

Jewish Independent: CANADALAND started as a podcast where you had a single weekly conversation with someone in the media. You’ve expanded. Is everything going as planned or are you surprised at the success of this project?

Jesse Brown: Wildly surprised. When I launched the crowdfunding campaign a year into the project, I was terrified I wouldn’t get to the first goal: $1,000 a month so I could keep making the show as a part-time job. I threw “$10,000: CANADALAND the news org/podcast network” up as a fantasy reach-goal. I never expected to get it.

JI: CANADALAND the book is on-brand in the sense that it’s an irreverent takedown of fusty Canadian tropes, but it’s essentially a comedy book, which seems outside of your core mission. How did this come about?

JB: If you’re going to stick a pin in Canada’s smug superiority and its convenient mythologies, I can’t think of a better way to do that than in an hilarious book of rude jokes with good cartoons. Anything else would be a grim slog.

JI: For CANADALAND the media startup, about $200,000 comes from subscribers and another amount from sponsorship. Is it self-sustaining?

JB: It’s totally self-sustaining from crowdfunding and sponsorships. It’s not my vanity project, not something I’m ever going to bankroll out of my private bank account.

JI: In a sense, it’s not so different from what the JI does (subscriptions and advertising). The product is available for free (online, at coffee shops), but some people still buy subscriptions to get it mailed to their door. But this and other newspapers continually struggle financially. Do you think your funding model is applicable to ethnic presses?

JB: Similar model, yes. Also similar to NPR, who pioneered the model of flipping “exclusivity.” Instead of paying for content that nobody else can have, people pay for content so that everyone can have it. Ten percent of our readers and listeners make it possible for everyone else. As for tips … podcasts are generally more successful than articles at inspiring support. It’s the intimacy of the medium, the relationship between podcaster and listener. So, you should make a podcast!

JI: Community papers need to balance freedom of speech and the financial reality that the people who pay for the product are usually older and more conservative than the ones who are getting it for free. Subscriptions are lost when something controversial is published, but nothing is gained from the people who appreciate the content but don’t pay for it. Do you feel any pressure not to cross certain lines because of audience or advertisers?

JB: Not really. We only take ad money from people we don’t cover and, as for our patrons, they are of no one political stripe. I’m mindful of what I say for fear of being dumb or wrong. I don’t mind offending people when I believe what I say and, generally speaking, if I lose one patron because they disagree with me, I gain another who likes what I said. Most patrons understand that they are funding an organization with many voices, that does important original journalism in addition to punditry, and that it’s not mandatory that they agree with me in order to support CANADALAND.

As for people not paying for a Jewish newspaper, the problem is that it’s a newspaper. If someone did something like Tablet [an American Jewish online magazine] in Canada and it was really good, people would pay for it.

JI: You don’t think our community is especially thin-skinned?

JB: I think smart Jews, of which there are many, value good debate. I think some older Jews are getting calcified in their opinions, are drifting rightwards as they age, feel like they are under siege, and see themselves as defenders of the tribe, not as people engaged in a good faith conversation.

JI: In the CANADALAND podcast “Being Jewish in Public,” you said that, because attacks on you as a Jew had reached a certain threshold, it wasn’t tenable any longer to be taciturn about your Jewishness in the media, and you wanted to foreground it in a discussion with a few people who explicitly talk about Jewishness all the time. Did something change for you after doing that episode?

JB: Yes, but I’m still working it out. I increasingly feel that the public discourse around all things Jewish has been abandoned by everyone except for those with radical positions: hawkish Zionists on the one side who are increasingly in cahoots with flat-out racists, Islamophobes and even neo-Nazis. And anti-Zionists on the other side, who decry Israel in absolute terms while, in my opinion, offering little in the way of viable solutions to the conflict. So, these two camps scream at each other and the rest of us have left the building.

JI: It sounded on that episode like you thought you were the only person who believes in Israel’s existence but has strong criticisms of the government. Do you really feel so isolated in your views, which are pretty typical for centre- or left-leaning Jews?

JB: I suspect most Jews feel the same, but we keep quiet because we don’t really know what to say. I don’t pretend to know what should happen in the Middle East, but I don’t like the way that extreme views from extreme people are increasingly defining not just the Israel debate, but Jewishness itself.

JI: Ezra Levant, another notable Canadian Jew, is also running a website media startup – The Rebel – which you talk about a fair bit on CANADALAND. Is the sparring between the two of you a symptom of a healthy rivalry?

JB: Ezra is not my rival. Nobody who funds The Rebel would dream of funding CANADALAND. Our business interests are not in conflict. We cover him a lot because our job is to cover the media and The Rebel is a media company (among other things) that is being ignored in large part by the big news organizations. They claim he is beneath their contempt or that they don’t want to feed a troll but, in truth, he is very litigious, he fights dirty, and they can’t afford to hold him to account. So we do it.

JI: How can you afford it?

JB: I dunno, maybe because we have less to lose? I don’t live in fear of a legal challenge from Ezra, and his doxxing and public mobbing tactics don’t scare me. I think he’s building a hate machine, I agree with the courts that he has no regard for the truth, and I consider his harassment and disinformation campaigns quite dangerous. So, I’m not sure what we’re here for, if not to scrutinize him and hold his organization to account.

JI: You just did a show recently about the newspaper bailout proposal suggested by a newspaper industry group. Under the proposal, it sounds like small community papers like us would be eligible but not web-native reporting startups like you. You’re against the proposal. Do you think there’s a way to subsidize news that would be good?

JB: Maybe, but I’m doubtful. I think various approaches would do some good for some people, but the overall effect would be terrible, for reasons explained on the show. But there are other things the government could do that would be very helpful; for example, removing the policies that inhibit charities from doing journalism. Nonprofit donor-based models would be a good choice for the ethnic press. And prohibiting the CBC from selling digital ads, but funding them well to do (mandatory) local news reporting online, which would be available for any publication to run or build on as free wire copy content – this would be a huge boon to small news organizations.

We make the most popular Canadian podcasts. We sell companies ads on them. We turn a small profit and pay our taxes. Meanwhile, the CBC is making podcasts with tax dollars and selling ads to the same companies that we do, and they can undercut us on ad rates because they don’t need the money to survive, as we do. I support a strong public broadcaster, not some weird commercialized but subsidized broadcaster that competes with tiny startups.

Maayan Kreitzman is a PhD student in conservation biology at the University of British Columbia, who dabbles in editing, podcasting, and knitting. Follow her on Twitter at @maayanster.

Saint-Paul transforms

Paul Shore gets a little help from his daughter at a recent book signing. (photo from Paul Shore)

Cultural pastimes, like pétanque, “recharge our joie de vivre, our delight in being alive; they free our minds; and they fuel our chutzpah for adventure. We must protect these beautiful little gifts, tie a bow around them, love and keep them safe,” writes Paul Shore in Uncorked: My Year in Provence Studying Pétanque, Discovering Chagall, Drinking Pastis and Mangling French (Sea to Sky Books, 2016).

The title pretty much describes the basic content of this delightful 164-page book, and gives a hint of the light touch with which Shore writes. His story will make readers reflect on their own pivotal life journeys, if they have been lucky enough to have them. Perhaps it will also make us recommit to what we’ve learned from such experiences – the need to stop and smell the proverbial roses, for example, and the joy and fulfilment that can come from opening ourselves up to new places, people, cultures – the list goes on.

It was his job that took Shore to Saint-Paul in 1999. When the Vancouver-based software company with which he worked opened an “outpost in the Nice area” of France – with him “as its sole initial employee” – he leapt at the opportunity. Telling his firm he wanted to live in a “cute small town,” he found himself in Saint-Paul de Vence.

“Little did I realize,” he writes, “that I was about to take up residence in a village that could be best described in summer as ‘gaudy tourist central’ because it was so famous and magical…. Nor did I know that the brilliant modernist painter Marc Chagall had lived, worked and was buried in my soon-to-be-surrogate hometown. Nor did I have a clue that Saint-Paul was tantamount to a holy site for an odd game called pétanque.”

“I lived in Saint-Paul for almost exactly one year – from January 1999 to late December 1999,” Shore told the Independent. “I had visited Nice the year before on a short business trip and dreamed about the possibility of someday spending a longer stint in the region. And I had been in the south of France years earlier, in 1990, as a Euro-Railing new university grad.”

Shore grew up in Ottawa, but has called Vancouver and its environs home for many years. He, his wife, Talya, and their two children have lived in Whistler since 2003.

“We are longtime members of Temple Sholom,” he said. “In Whistler, we get together with Jewish friends for major holidays and we visit Temple Sholom and family in Vancouver from time to time, too.”

There are a few Jewish terms and references in Uncorked and a pivotal exchange between Shore and a woman named Adele, the manager of an art gallery in Saint-Paul – she is the one who informs Shore that Chagall had lived and painted in the village. She also shares with him that Chagall was a Russian Jew and that she, too, is Jewish and her family came from Russia. “Comme ma famille [Like my family],” writes Shore, who explores his heritage further in the latter half of the book.

While there are various entertaining and touching tangents, the focus of Uncorked is Shore’s quest to learn the mysteries of pétanque, which he describes “for the uninitiated,” as looking “a little like the Italian game of bocce, or the British game of lawn bowling, or even the winter sport of curling that is popular in Canada,” though, he advises readers “not to suggest such similarities out loud while standing on French soil, unless you have no desire to try to play the game, no desire to be welcomed into a café, no desire to gain the friendship of a local, and you desire to have the nickname Monsieur Con – the polite translation of which is ‘village idiot.’”

photo - Paul Shore in action on the pétanque field — Paul Shore in action on the pétanque field. *(photo from Paul Shore)*

Shore was determined to “gain entry into the arcane world of this ancient game with its half-understood rituals and ancient codes.” With help from a friend (Hubert) and a lot of practise, he works his way up from spectator to furtive nighttime learner to solid daylight player to confident owner-of-his-own-ball-set player. He knows he has been accepted fully into Saint-Paul life when he is invited into Le Cercle (The Circle), “the private bar that was off limits to everybody except registered pétanque players of Saint-Paul,” and receives his member card.

Unfortunately, by that time, his work was going to need him back in Vancouver. In talking with one of his friends in France a couple of weeks before his return to Canada, Shore vows, “I’ll swim in the fast lane awhile longer … but not forever … France has taught me it’s not worth the personal sacrifice.”

“When I returned to accept a new role with Broadcom in Vancouver, I unfortunately couldn’t swim in a slower lane for the seven years I stayed with the company,” Shore admitted to the Independent. “I worked ridiculously hard, traveled too much for business, while being within the core of the high-tech industry and spending a lot of time in Silicon Valley during those years. It was exciting and I learned a lot, but it troubled me that I wasn’t able to apply what I had absorbed during my year in France about living a well-balanced lifestyle…. Since I departed Broadcom in 2007, I have lived differently – working hard in intense environments at times, though not for long periods of time and with far more varied interests and time off to vacation and to help raise a young family.”

For the past year, he said, “I’ve been doing a little business consulting, while focusing on marketing my book and pursuing new interests in the renewable energy world. I also manage a vacation rental property that we own on the northern Sunshine Coast in the town of Lund – we call it ‘The Shores at Lund.’”

He has returned to Saint-Paul with his wife a couple of times. “And we plan to visit again next June – the first time with kids, ours are 9 and 5,” he said. “I will definitely bring my pétanque balls back to play there again. I have always stayed in regular contact with Hubert, even though I haven’t seen him in person since 2006. I have a couple other French friends who I speak to less often, though we also stay in touch – one now lives in Montreal and we have seen her a few times over the years.”

Shore has played pétanque in Whistler on Bastille Day, though not lately. “I will definitely teach my kids,” he said, “once they can safely handle the heavy metal projectiles.”

As for his motivation to write this book almost 20 years after his stint in Saint-Paul, Shore said, “I have wanted to try my hand at writing for ages, though I never seemed to make the time. On the flight home in 2003, I made some notes about my year in France four years earlier, just so I wouldn’t forget all the humorous and fond memories. Those notes sat in my desk drawer at home until the spring of 2015 when I had a surgery that caused me to be immobile for several weeks. My wife brought me the notes to my lawn chair in the middle of the living room and told me that now was the time to write – and so it began.

“I wrote a lot for about two months and then set it aside until the next spring, when I departed a job and had a health scare around the same time. I then picked up the writing again, determined to finish. I didn’t know if I’d ever publish it, until I was with a friend named Joel Solomon at a workshop at Hollyhock (on Cortes Island) and he encouraged me to get it out there one way or another. Joel introduced me to a small firm, named Page Two Strategies (co-founder is Jesse Finkelstein), who I hired to assist me with the pursuit of a self-publishing path.”

Shore is obviously tenacious.

“I encourage people to pursue challenges and not to accept ‘no’ for answer,” he said. “‘Why not try?’ is a philosophy that I have attempted to live by for my entire adult life.”