{"id":260,"date":"2017-03-10T17:28:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T17:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jamietennant.ca\/?p=260"},"modified":"2017-03-16T19:44:55","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T19:44:55","slug":"get-lit-e16-featuring-emma-richler-some-richler-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jamietennant.ca\/index.php\/2017\/03\/10\/get-lit-e16-featuring-emma-richler-some-richler-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Lit E16 featuring Emma Richler + some Richler memories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Until today, almost all of my blog entries have been links to my podcast, Get Lit. Today\u2019s is no exception – I hope you enjoy the interview with Emma Richler!<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t post something Richler-related, however, without looking back on the influence the Richler family has had on my career as a writer. Wait, can you call it a career when you\u2019ve been doing it all your life but have only published one novel? Is \u201cvocation\u201d better? Anyway. I\u2019ve already mentioned \u2013 back in my first blog post<\/a> \u2013 that Mordecai Richler was a huge influence on me as a child. My first long-form story was, technically speaking, Jacob Two-Two Meets The Hooded Fang fan fiction. It wasn\u2019t until years later that I learned this Richler fellow penned some fantastic books for adults as well.<\/p>\n

The second Richler to have an effect on me was Mordecai\u2019s son, Daniel. As an avid New Music<\/em> watcher, I was a big fan of Daniel Richler (that interview with Lou Reed! Or that one with the Jesus and Mary Chain<\/a>!). So I eagerly picked up a copy of 1991\u2019s Kicking Tomorrow<\/em>, read a few pages\u2026and put it down.\u00a0I just wasn\u2019t into it.\"\"<\/p>\n

A lesson for readers: if you’re not feeling something, put the book down, but give it another chance later<\/em>. Here’s why. In 1994, I left to tour North America (selling merch for a ska band<\/a>!) I\u00a0threw a few unread novels into my bag for the long drive across the continent. At some point in the 56-hour drive to Fresno, CA, I started to read Kicking Tomorrow<\/em>\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

At another point on the journey \u2013 the stretch between San Diego a recently-rattled-by-earthquake Los Angeles \u2013 I put the book down, this time having finished it. Then I picked up a pen and a pad of paper and began to write. It was like nothing I\u2019d ever written before. There was no wish-fulfillment action-adventure in the book. Instead, it was a look into loneliness, a highly autobiographical description of the wayward drift I felt in my 20s (and, it should be noted, a celebration of the unexpected joys). I finished the first draft, by hand, in five weeks. The book eventually came to be called Stumbling<\/em>. It remains unpublished (for now?) but that\u2019s not important.\u00a0The point is, Mordecai got me writing, and Daniel got me writing on a new level.<\/p>\n

So enjoy this interview with Emma!<\/p>\n

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