A.E.: It appears that the career of English has been very aggressive and capitalist, as personified in Hengest, from day one. What in your opinion is England’s chief gift to the world, language as a globalising tool or our ability to identify oppression even when it is disguised as simple language games?
T.H.: Those are interesting choices you give me. I wouldn’t dispute that the globalizing tool of English is a gift—it is—but perhaps it’s the sort of gift that also imposes, like giving someone a new chandelier, or an animal they didn’t ask for? The recipient might value the benefits while still feeling pissed-off about the whole situation, and mourn the alternative opportunities this gift now closes down. As for the ability to spot oppression in odd places, I can see the easy riposte that nobody required England and English in particular for that. But if I understand the question correctly, you’re suggesting that looking at English (its career, its character, the composition of its vocabulary) gives us a useful way into thinking about oppression on many levels, especially the disguised or harmless-looking varieties. While my writing is full of jokes, this suggestion does point at a place I wanted the book to go, even if I don’t quite get there.
A.E.: At the beginning you mentioned how the philologist J.R.R. Tolkien was inspired to write his novels, the Lord of the Rings series, and The Hobbit due to the inspiration of Beowulf and other ancient texts. I wonder if you do not have a novel or several novels in you, considering the philology-inspired, narratological sub-layer and imagination of Rude Story. Are you secretly working on a masterpiece novel?
T.H.: Helen Guri is secretly working on her masterpiece second collection of poems. (Oh, I guess it’s not a secret anymore.) She supported me through four years of writing this book, financially, editorially, emotionally, domestic laboriously. I can’t thank her enough. I can, however, work off my debt by responding in kind, so that’s what I’m going to do for the next while.
A.E.: Contemporary writing does not usually have much humour in it; such writing are usually serious, contemplative, provocative or innovative, and so on, but few are hardly ever humorous. How important was the deployment of humour in order for you to have achieved the effects you had in your sight; and what were those effects or goals?
T.H.: I’ve heard many people remark on the humourless state of, at least, Canadian big-press fiction and nonfiction. It’s interesting. I’d never noticed it or thought about it. For me, dealing with humour is less about ‘deployment’ and more about removal. My drafts are littered with impulsive jokes, frivolous ideas, distracting asides. They all crack me up while I’m writing, of course, but once I’ve picked myself up off the floor and let a joke sit on the page for a while, I often come to see how dumb it is. I’m terribly obnoxious about laughing at my own jokes. I cackle at them far more than at other people’s. Sometimes a thought hits me on the street or at the grocery store and I double-up. Perhaps that’s commonplace, although I don’t really notice other people doing it. If The Rude Story makes you laugh, I think it’s mostly succeeding already, because to find it funny you need to be on a wavelength with it. After that, I can’t say there are many goals—I mean, sure I enjoyed meditating on parts, or learning stuff about King Alfred or whatever, but thinking and learning and even discomfort are all ingredients of enjoyment. I guess the hoped-for effect of laughter is that it encourages a reader to turn the page, and keep turning pages until the end.
A.E.: Thank you for taking time off your busy schedule to chat with us.
T.H.: Thanks for the honour! MTLS is a great journal.
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