George

I first heard of George Fetherling in the early 1990s, when he went by Douglas. He changed it to George (his middle name) in 1999 in honour of his late-father, even though every second (male) author in Canada went by that name too.

Fetherling was born in West Virginia on January 1, 1949 and came to Canada (Toronto, via New York) in 1967. He was House of Anansi's first employee. In 2000 he moved to Vancouver, to work as a Vancouver Sun book page columnist. Like many newly-arrived Vancouverites he fell in love with the Sylvia Hotel.

He has written over fifty books, in all genres, and edited and published many more. He has participated in numerous residencies and volunteered his time as an organizer, most recently as the Chair of the Writers Union of Canada (2016/2017). At some point he referred to me as "ineffable," which is a nice way of saying I would prefer not to.

A couple years ago Fetherling was interviewed by the Globe and Mail on the occasion of his novel The Carpenter from Montreal (2017). When asked What is more important: the beginning of the book or the end? his response recalled my late friend Dean Allen, a designer who was also a writer and an editor and a publisher. Dean would have appreciated the wit, the wisdom, and indeed the Adornoian dialectic carried in Fethering's example:

The beginning – and especially the opening sentence -- because it tells you much about the author. Richard Nixon's autobiography opens with "I was born in the house my father built." In fact, he was born in a house in Southern California that his father ordered by mail from Sears in the East – a kit – and then hired exploited Mexican labourers to assemble it for him. This first sentence shows Nixon as the very thing his book tries to deny that he was: a liar. Also, one can easily imagine how various writers would have begun other authors' famous openings. If Philip Roth had written Moby-Dick it would have begun: "My parents named me Ishmael but you can call me Ishsy."