For prize-winning poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje, every book is an act of discovery
Michael Ondaatje's stories often begin with a question. Who, for instance, was this burned man lying in a bed in a deserted Italian villa, who became the title character in Ondaatje's most famous novel, The English Patient? It won him Canada's first Booker Prize and brought him even more international attention through the movie adaptation, which won nine Oscars. In 2018 it was awarded the Golden Man Booker Prize, as the best novel of the Booker's 50-year history.
Ondaatje began his career as a poet, with such titles as Secular Love and The Cinnamon Peeler. His work is often rooted in history – from Toronto in the early 1900s, to North Africa during the Second World War, to his own family roots in Sri Lanka. He's published eight novels, including Running in the Family, In the Skin of a Lion, Anil's Ghost, The Cat's Table and Warlight.
Ondaatje recently received the Grand Prix, for lifetime achievement, from Montreal's Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival. He spoke to Eleanor Wachtel on this occasion, at a CBC studio in Toronto.
An unlikely writer
"Being a writer was just a concept that would have been impossible to even think about or imagine had I stayed in Sri Lanka. There weren't that many books in Sri Lanka that were written by people I knew. Everyone was doing Agatha Christie or Jane Austen. The really good writers in Sri Lanka were writing in Sinhala or Tamil, which at that point I wasn't able to read.
It was almost not even a fantasy — it was a ridiculous concept that you could become a writer.- Michael Ondaatje
"Then in England there was this huge gap between being 15 years old and then T.S. Eliot or Ted Hughes or whoever it was. It was almost not even a fantasy — it was a ridiculous concept that you could become a writer.
"I was very lucky in the way that I came to Canada because I began to meet small presses like Coach House Press and Anansi, and I was meeting people who were exactly the same age as me, like bpNichol and Joe Rosenblatt. They were writing poems, and they were designing their books, and they were putting in drawings when they wanted to put in drawings. So suddenly there was a much more democratic sense to writing."
Magical moments
"You're not going to believe the story behind The Cinnamon Peeler, but I'll tell you anyway. I was doing research on Running in the Family, and I was talking to a man who could put charms on people and so I was very interested in that. It's quite common — if there's an in-law you don't like, you put a charm on him.
"He knew how to do charms, and knew also how to get rid of charms, which was actually what I was interested in. So I went to see him, we were chatting and we had a great conversation. I was taping him and when I got back to write about this, the tape recorder didn't work at all.
"I thought, 'What the hell is this?' I was so angry because it was a great 20 minutes of chat about charms. So I just sat down and I wrote The Cinnamon Peeler — one shot, no break. It was a magical moment for me. I had no idea I was going to write this poem. I hadn't plotted it or anything like that. I knew the various professions that there were like cinnamon peelers and so forth, but that was all I had. So I was very lucky in that way. I see it as just kind of an odd magical moment."
LISTEN | Michael Ondaatje discusses The English Patient:
Different perspectives
"I think I was lucky in the sense that I had more than one point of view, or more than one perspective about how one lives. When my kids went to Sri Lanka with me later on, I was thrilled that they witnessed what it was like to live there as opposed to just in Canada. And it did mean a lot to them, I think. If I was suddenly landed in North America or England, it would have been a very limited perspective on life.
"England by itself was strange enough, when I arrived there at the age of 11 or 12, and it was so foreign to me. I thought in England it snowed all the time, and then within about five days of arriving, I was sent to a school where I had to wear a tie, which I had never worn, and socks and stuff like that. So it was a new set of costumes and rules and orders and it was very odd."
Growing with the characters
"The English Patient really did begin with a nurse talking to a patient, and I didn't know who they were. Then, later on, I was told about the spy who had gone across the desert, and I didn't know anything about him and that was interesting. I didn't really know the whole context of it.
"Then I began reading about the the British following these Germans across the desert, and suddenly there was a more complex situational plot than I was imagining. But it really began with the nurse and the patient.
"I didn't know who they were, so you have to start asking yourself, 'Who are they?' And then Caravaggio comes into it and who the hell is he? So I guess one of the interesting things that happened was I could now write about the nurse, Hana, and Caravaggio, who had been in an earlier book and much younger and much more innocent, now in a state of war where he has been tortured and so forth.
"It's all a case of the characters growing up and becoming different people, and the complexity of how they had to deal with their past."
Michael Ondaatje's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
