Requiem (36 page)
I acknowledge
The Fraser
by Bruce Hutchison;
The Letters of Beethoven
, 3 vols., collected, edited and translated by Emily Anderson; Heinrich Böll’s essay “The Place Was Incidental” in
Missing Persons and Other Essays
.
I appreciate the love, support and expertise of my husband, Ted, and my children. For answering my many questions about music, thanks to my son, Russell Satoshi Itani. To my daughter, Samantha Leiko Itani, thanks for constantly checking in and for responding to my queries about the natural world. Also, for advice, love and support sent my way, I thank composer Yehudi Wyner, and conductor Susan Davenny Wyner, both in Massachusetts; composer Gabriela Ortiz in Mexico City; pianist Emily Upham in New York. Many thanks to the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in New York, which generously provided me with a fellowship and residency at an Italian castle in Umbria: a wonderful retreat where I had the support of director and staff, and the company of fine artists in residence at the time. My gratitude and special thanks go to stroke expert Dr. Antoine Hakim, to artist Bobbie Oliver and to actor Eve Crawford. To artist Norman Takeuchi, I so appreciate our many discussions and the visits to your studio. I thank legal expert, Ilario Maiolo, who helped me to understand the laws of the period and what constitutes a Crime Against Humanity. Also, special thanks to: Craig Smith; Aileen Bramhall Itani; Joel Oliver; Judy Oliver; Orm and Barb Mitchell; Paul Kariya; Terry Gronbeck-Jones; my former professor Gordon Hirabayashi; Caroline Page and the original “Basil.” A few incidents in
Requiem
first saw the light of day in an earlier story called “Flashcards.” Resemblance to any person living or dead, or to any names found within, is entirely coincidental; this is a work of fiction. If there are errors in background or historical information, I take full responsibility.
Finally, with great affection, I acknowledge my agent, Jackie Kaiser, and my editor and publisher at HarperCollins, Phyllis Bruce. I know it’s there, always, during these long journeys: your unwavering support. I thank you both.
FRANCES ITANI
had a spectacular international debut with her first novel,
Deafening
, which received a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean region) and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It became a #1 bestseller in Canada and was published in seventeen countries and in many languages. Her second novel,
Remembering the Bones
, also a bestseller, was shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her short story collection,
Poached Egg On Toast
, won the Ottawa Book Award and the CAA Jubilee Award for Short Stories. A member of the Order of Canada, Itani lives in Ottawa.
This book is set in Dante, the first versions of which were the product of a collaboration between Giovanni Mardersteig, a printer, book and typeface designer, and Charles Malin, one of the great punch-cutters of the twentieth century.
Mardersteig drew on his experience of using Monotype Bembo and Centaur to design a new book face with an italic that worked harmoniously with the roman. Years of collaboration with Malin had taught him the nuances of letter construction, and the two worked closely to develop a design that was easy to read. Special care was taken in the design of the serifs and top curves of the lowercase to create a subtle horizontal stress, which helps the eye move smoothly across the page.
In 1955, after six years of work, the fonts were used to publish Boccaccio’s
Trattatello in laude di Dante
. The design took its name from this project.
Ideas, interviews & features
*
About the author
The Writing of
Requiem:
An Essay by Frances Itani
Author Biography
FRANCES ITANI is the author of fourteen books: novels, poetry, short stories and children’s books. Born in Belleville, Ontario, she grew up in rural Quebec from the age of four. She has a BA in Psychology and English and an MA in English Literature. She is also a registered nurse, having studied at the Montreal General Hospital School of Nursing, McGill University and Duke University in North Carolina. She practised and taught nursing for eight years before becoming a writer.
Itani had a spectacular international debut with her first novel,
Deafening
, which received a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book and was shortlisted for the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the William Saroyan International Prize.
Deafening
was a #1 bestseller in Canada; it won the Kingston Reads Award and was named Book of the Year by Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton. In 2006, it was chosen in both English and French by CBC’s
Canada Reads
and
Combat des livres
. The novel was also optioned for film and has been translated and published in seventeen countries.
Her second novel,
Remembering the Bones
, also a bestseller, was published internationally and shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Itani’s stories have won two Ottawa Book Awards for English fiction, and she is a three-time winner of the CBC Literary Award. Her collection
Poached Egg On Toast
won the 2005 CAA Jubilee Award for best book of stories published in Canada.
Leaning, Leaning Over Water
was published internationally; it was a selection of
The Times’
Book Group in the U.K. Itani has written two short novels for adult literacy classes:
Listen!
and
Missing. Requiem
has also been published in the U.S. and is forthcoming in Germany and Bulgaria.
Itani has contributed to
The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Canadian Geographic, Saturday Night, Ottawa Citizen
and many other publications. Currently, she is on the advisory board of Youth in Motion’s Top 20 Under 20 Award. A member of the Order of Canada, she lives in Ottawa.
How has your being part of a large family of Irish Canadian storytellers influenced you and your writing?
I was surrounded by kitchen-table narrative. My mother, my aunts and uncles were all storytellers. Our own family lived in Quebec and our relatives lived in Eastern Ontario, so it was during visits that I overheard multi-layered accounts of complicated lives. Everyone, it seemed, had stored up something to tell. I lived in the midst of stories from the past, stories created in the moment, imaginings into the future. I was on the sidelines trying to figure out how adults moved through this complex world of theirs—so totally unlike the world of children, which I knew intimately. But even in the separate world of children, stories were important. I was the middle child of five and I invented stories, wrote radio broadcasts with my sister, created theatre, read whatever books I could find—books were scarce during my childhood. Of course, I was also absorbing language, nuance, mood. I was absorbing voices, especially those of women of a particular place and time.
When did you begin writing?
I began to write poetry as a student when I was about eighteen. I didn’t pursue this further until my mid- to late twenties, when I returned to Canada after several years abroad. I switched careers and went back to school again. As part of my degree work at the University of Alberta, I enrolled in a writing course with W.O. Mitchell. Another possible world began to open up before me, and I slid into it sideways. I made the commitment. But it was also a difficult time for me; I had two young babies, I was completing my degrees and I was trying to believe that I could be a writer.
You start all your novels writing longhand in a notebook. What do you believe this brings to the creative process?
Writing longhand is the method I’m used to, and it’s not as dated as some may think. People do still hold pens in their hands—in my case, it’s a pen with real ink! I can switch over to the computer at any stage, but I still like to feel my way into the voice and direction of a story while sitting at a table, a spiral notebook before me. There’s something really lovely about the flowing of the mind right down through the ink. I try to find my way into the telling with my pen. I try to find my way into the voices. Who is going to tell each of the stories in the novel? When does each character take over his or her own voice?
Writing longhand is easy, too, when I’m travelling. There’s always a notebook in my shoulder bag. When I’m home, if I do switch to the computer, I sometimes stall. That’s when I move into another room entirely and go back to longhand.
You’ve said that you never use an outline, that you create your characters in an “organic” way. Can you explain your approach?
I start with an image, a theme, an idea. The first scene I create could end up in the last chapter of a book. I don’t want a plan and don’t make a plan. I don’t want a plot. None of my books has a plot. That is not to say that there isn’t action in my work. I just don’t want anything forced. I do, however, want my work to surprise me. I want the mystery of it. I want the doors open wide while I’m creating. I want edges and boundaries to fall away.
Having said that, theme is important from the beginning.
Requiem
began with themes of loss and anger—how would my main character handle these? When I’m starting out, I don’t yet know how the particulars of each person’s story will unfold. So much happens at the subconscious level, a level of creation that I deeply trust. Thematic structure changes and unfolds with the writing.
Requiem
ends with a theme of redemption that encompasses love and art and hope. As I progress through a novel, the basic ideas broaden out in all directions.
Natalie Samson, writing in
Quill & Quire
, said, “
Requiem
is an exploration of the places history is stored: letters, art, music, literature and the human body itself.” Did you set out to write about this, or did these ideas evolve?
I find it interesting that the reviewer chose to discuss one of the important sub-themes in
Requiem
. I was purposeful in creating Lena as historian. I wanted her approach to history to offset Bin’s. Bin tries to push away and forget. Lena wants to recount and store family history, and pass it on to future generations. The rest was unplanned on my part. At least at the beginning—one always gets hold of intertwining themes before the finish line! Music, for instance, is stored in the body in many ways, especially for composers and performers. The scene in which Lena and Bin return to their home and discuss how he first heard music (as a series of rhythms and taps against wood) brought me to tears in the writing, and still has that effect on me. Music on skin. A scene not at all planned. This is what I mean by the subconscious working for a writer. All of these threads tie in to the main theme. The throwing of the archival papers into the river, the Beethoven letters, the memory of the first recordings heard by the child.
In writing
Requiem
, how much did you struggle with separating family history from fiction?
It was difficult at times, because of a full awareness of my husband having lived his entire childhood in an internment camp. I wanted my character Bin Okuma to be unique—entirely different from family members and friends. I was not writing biography. I had done the research; I’d talked to and interviewed Japanese Canadians; I knew the historic events leading up to and subsequent to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. I had witnessed, for more than forty years, how these events left their mark on personalities and on families. But my story depended entirely on my imagination. Fortunately, I’ve always loved invention.
Did your husband read early drafts?
I did not discuss the book with my husband over the four-year period of its creation. He knew the subject matter and the time period, but that was about all. My husband never reads my work until it’s between covers. In fact, I don’t show a word of an ongoing novel to anyone during its creation—a period that could last four to six years. The first two people to read my work are my agent and my publisher—and only when I feel I have a satisfactory draft ready to be seen. This could be my fiftieth or my hundredth draft. It all depends …
You completed an incredible amount of research for
Requiem
, and some of what you uncovered must have been heartbreaking. What kept you writing?
I never stopped believing that it was important for me to write this book. One of the reasons I created
Requiem
was to let people know what really went on. The main reason might have been my hope that what happened to my husband will never happen to our children or grandchildren because of the shape of their eyes and the colour of their skin.
Music is woven beautifully into the fabric of
Requiem
. Why did you decide that music would be an important part of Bin’s life?
To intertwine the events of the novel with music was an early decision and a natural unfolding. I kept thinking of a musician, a pianist imprisoned. How would he practise in a remote camp in the mountains? I decided he would make his own keyboard from the forest around him. I kept thinking: who would know about chaos, forgiveness, redemption—themes important to the novel? I discussed the underlying themes extensively with my son, who is a musician. It seemed that Beethoven was the composer who best understood. I listened to Beethoven’s music throughout the years it took me to write the book. I came to understand much more about Beethoven’s genius through his letters and various biographies—not to mention the brilliant recordings I now own.