Author William Neil Scott reads from his debut novel Wonderfull at the Auburn Saloon on Sunday October 14
William Neil Scott’s autobiography of lies
“First novels are often tragically autobiographical” says William Neil Scott. “If I’m going to write something autobiographical I still want it to be fun. There are family stories all throughout this book but I always go with the fiction over the fact. Whatever makes it more interesting to read.”
Scott’s book Wonderfull is a magic realist tale woven around the fictional town of Garfax a place that doesn’t appear on any map or official document. Originally billed as “an autobiography of lies” many of the interconnected tales from Garfax are truthful duplications of stories told to Scott throughout his life — but with ghosts month long storms radios that broadcast secrets eternal domino games and clairvoyant parents added for good measure.
“My mother and father constantly had these arguments about whose father did more during the Second World War and it’s almost like the dead relatives have actually shown up and started having this pissing contest” laughs Scott. “There was that constant presence but to write that realistically isn’t that interesting. When I read realism… well I just get bored. At some point during a conversation I just want ghosts to barge in. And I don’t want people to be scared by them. I just want them to be a bit annoyed.”
Scott tells of reading his grandfather’s love letters to his grandmother and how he consistently spelled two words wrong throughout the entire war: allotment and wonderful. Inspired by magic realist heavyweights like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Robert Kroetsch Scott uses his own emotional experience to imprint the fantastic upon the realistic allowing him to incorporate any number of outrageous things — like two families’ generations-old rivalry being represented through an unending game of dominoes — without losing any authenticity. “I wrote the book in my second last year at the University of Calgary and at that point in time my mother was quite sick” says Scott. “I had this desire to just get up and leave. This is a story about leaving home getting out from under all the stories and issues of your parents — but not really in a negative way.
“The phrase I like to use is ‘genetic conversation’” he adds. “You inherit certain traits from your family — certain problems and issues. Your parents might have all of these problems but it’s almost like any of the problems they can’t solve themselves you have to. There’s a constant state of repetition and that’s in the novel. The problems the parents have affect the children and they have to decide what to do with them. One is destroyed by them but the other makes different decisions.”
Besides the strict literary and emotional influences Scott also took a special interest in the debacle surrounding James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. For those without elephantine memories: author Frey was publicly humiliated by Oprah when she realized that the book she had endorsed as a memoir turned out to be a fabrication. Though the term “memoir” does imply a level of fictionalization anyway Scott feels that an over-emphasis on finding the truth in our stories is silly under any circumstances.
“I hate this idea — this desire to get truth out of everything” says Scott. “You see that ‘based on a true story’ bullshit in movies all the time. As soon as you write something down and frame it in a narrative it’s a lie. It’s not what happened it’s your version of what happened. All we have are stories. All we do is tell stories about each other and about ourselves. And the stories we decide on those are the important things that carry us through.”
