Nov. 20: Make-believe town
I think the best fiction
blends imagination with real life. I prefer a novel that's set in
Calgary or New York or Budapest instead of Pickax City or the People's
Republic of Oomfoofoo.
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In high school, my mother gave me a copy of W.O. Mitchell's novel Ladybug, Ladybug, which actually takes place in Calgary. That knowledge enthralled me. I'd grown up thinking Calgary was relatively unimportant, certainly not deserving the respect of bigger metropolises like Los Angeles or Toronto or Paris. But here was W.O. Mitchell, arguably one of the best novelists Canada has ever produced, setting one of his stories in the great YYC.
Yahoo, I say.
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I was born in Rosetown, Saskatchewan. Its population is roughly 3,500. Nobody's ever going to write a story that takes part there, right?
Well, that's not entirely true.
May I introduce to you the great Michael Slade, whose grisly novels may be the best serial killer fiction in the world. Slade is (or was) the pen name of three criminal lawyers who specialized in criminal insanity. You can bet a whole lot of sunshine and roses bounces off their word processors.
Slade's books revolved around Special-X, the Vancouver based branch of the RCMP that specializes in serial killers. He had two protagonists - Chief Robert DeClercq and Inspector Zinc Chandler, who was from Rosetown.
I shit you not. He was from Rosetown. Ooh, time for a page grab.
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I sent Michael Slade an email asking him why he chose Rosetown as Chandler's birthplace. He said that he saw it on a map and liked the way it sounded. I'm not sure if he's ever been to Rosetown. Certainly he hadn't when he wrote his books so we can say that for him, Rosetown was a make believe town. He could have made anything up he wanted about Rosetown and the readers would have accepted it because it's fiction.
I have not been to Rosetown in three years. I know there's a Chinese restaurant there. There's a weekly newspaper housed in the same building as an office supply store. There's a dingy small-town nightclub attached to a motel. There's a water tower pained Roughriders green. There's a high school and a swimming pool and a small department store. When I was 11, I spent all day at that store while my grandparents shopped for God-knows-what and I entertained myself by watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom not once but twice on one of the store's television sets.
To me, Rosetown is not a make believe town. Neither is Calgary. New Orleans is because I have never been there and - more than anywhere in the world - New Orleans seems like the most likely place where the impossible can happen.
And that is my report on make believe towns
-
In high school, my mother gave me a copy of W.O. Mitchell's novel Ladybug, Ladybug, which actually takes place in Calgary. That knowledge enthralled me. I'd grown up thinking Calgary was relatively unimportant, certainly not deserving the respect of bigger metropolises like Los Angeles or Toronto or Paris. But here was W.O. Mitchell, arguably one of the best novelists Canada has ever produced, setting one of his stories in the great YYC.
Yahoo, I say.
-
I was born in Rosetown, Saskatchewan. Its population is roughly 3,500. Nobody's ever going to write a story that takes part there, right?
Well, that's not entirely true.
May I introduce to you the great Michael Slade, whose grisly novels may be the best serial killer fiction in the world. Slade is (or was) the pen name of three criminal lawyers who specialized in criminal insanity. You can bet a whole lot of sunshine and roses bounces off their word processors.
Slade's books revolved around Special-X, the Vancouver based branch of the RCMP that specializes in serial killers. He had two protagonists - Chief Robert DeClercq and Inspector Zinc Chandler, who was from Rosetown.
I shit you not. He was from Rosetown. Ooh, time for a page grab.
-
I sent Michael Slade an email asking him why he chose Rosetown as Chandler's birthplace. He said that he saw it on a map and liked the way it sounded. I'm not sure if he's ever been to Rosetown. Certainly he hadn't when he wrote his books so we can say that for him, Rosetown was a make believe town. He could have made anything up he wanted about Rosetown and the readers would have accepted it because it's fiction.
I have not been to Rosetown in three years. I know there's a Chinese restaurant there. There's a weekly newspaper housed in the same building as an office supply store. There's a dingy small-town nightclub attached to a motel. There's a water tower pained Roughriders green. There's a high school and a swimming pool and a small department store. When I was 11, I spent all day at that store while my grandparents shopped for God-knows-what and I entertained myself by watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom not once but twice on one of the store's television sets.
To me, Rosetown is not a make believe town. Neither is Calgary. New Orleans is because I have never been there and - more than anywhere in the world - New Orleans seems like the most likely place where the impossible can happen.
And that is my report on make believe towns
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