The Underpainter
by Jane Urquhart
List Price: $12.95
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0140269738
Publisher: Penguin USA
Born in 1949 in Little Long Lac, Ontario, Jane Urquhart was a child with
passionate artistic ambitions. She often staged impromptu performances
in a corner of the schoolyard, and as a teenager became fascinated with
the works of Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Urquhart,
who writes vividly about young love, grief, and loss, experienced widowhood
at the tender age of 24 when her husband, an art student, was tragically
killed in an accident. Soon afterwards she met Tony Urquhart, the painter
to whom she has been married for over twenty years and the father of her
teenage daughter. She has earned two degrees, in English and Art History.
Jane Urquhart is the author of three previous novels: The Whirlpool, which won France's prestigious
Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in 1992, Changing Heaven; and Away, which
won the Trillium Award in 1993, spent 132 weeks on the Canadian bestseller
lists and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary
Award. She has also published a volume of short stories and three collections
of poetry. She lives in a small village in southwestern Ontario, Canada.
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Is there a reason that you
made Austin Fraser an American artist, rather than a Canadian artist?
Do you think that art, literature and painting especially, is perceived
differently in America than it is in Canada?
It was important to me to make
Austin Fraser an American, not because I believe that he represents a
collective American personality or because I was trying to make a statement
about how the American art world operates, but because I wanted to look
at the Canadian society of the first part of this century from a vantage
point that was both close enough to be familiar and yet removed enough
to be able to view the landscape and customs of my country as "other."
It seemed to me that by having my main character's hometown be Rochester,
New York, I would be creating a situation in which he would be aware of
the country on the other side of the shared great lake as a kind of easily
accessible far shore, on the one hand, while, on the other, he would know
that his intimacy with this far shore must necessarily be limited. He
would not, for instance, be required to vote in its elections or join
its armies. Although he would be comfortable in this alternative world
which in many ways resembled his own, its destiny, in a significant way,
would neither involve nor concern him.
Having said this, I do believe
that, particularly during the time frame in which The Underpainter's
story unfolds, there were large differences between the way that art and
literature were perceived by society at large in the two countries and,
to a certain extent, by those who were endeavoring to be a part of the
art world. Canada was a very young country at the turn of the century,
one in which the pursuit of culture was still viewed as a rare privilege.
Moreover, it had not yet found its own Œvoice' or Œvision' and
was apt to be very influenced by the two stronger powers with which it
had the most contact—i.e. Britain and the United States.
You have a degree in art
history and are married to a painter. The visual arts seem to have a rather
large presence in your life. How has this infused your own work, especially
The Underpainter?
I find that the act of writing
fiction is, for me, a very visual experience. Often I can "see" the rooms
or landscapes in which the narrative is unfolding with my inner eye. In
fact if I am unable to see the characters and settings of the world I
am creating I know there is something wrong, that I have not fully entered
the text. Perhaps my contact with visual artists and my study of art history
have taught me how to look closely at the world so that I can store images
for future use in my writing. I know, for instance, that making a careful
drawing of an object, person, or landscape will bring one into a kind
of exaggerated intimacy with what is being rendered and this has always
fascinated me.
How similar do you think
the creative process is for painters and writers, or any artist for that
matter? Did you consider making Austin a writer rather than a painter?
I think there are both similarities
and differences among all of the arts. The largest similarity is that
the artist is by definition a person who stands slightly outside of society
so that he or she can have a clearer view of the world one must draw on
in order to create art. This is true even for performers who interpret
rather than create original material. However, composing (literature and
music) seems to me to be the most inward looking and solitary of the arts;
something that is done alone in a room and that very rarely involves collaboration.
For this reason I never considered
making Austin Fraser a writer. It was important to me that he collaborate,
or at least consciously use other lives in his creations. He has a model
for a time, and later he knowingly makes use of unaltered material from
other people's lives. It is true that writers sometimes do this as
well, but it is my feeling that the very best fiction transforms the facts
that may have inspired it almost beyond recognition in order to strengthen
the structure of the book.
You've said that while
writing The Underpainter, you often found yourself angry with Austin Fraser.
Why?
Often when I am composing a
novel I find that I am not necessarily in control of the actions of the
characters I have developed, that they will do things that I, as a person,
completely disapprove of. This was particularly true of Austin Fraser.
Although I was aware of his weaknesses and never lost sympathy for him,
occasionally I wanted to shake him and force him to wake up and see how
he was damaging those who cared about him, and ultimately how he was damaging
himself. But there is, I think, a bit of Austin Fraser in almost everyone,
including myself, so perhaps some of the anger came from the recognition
of potential insensitivity on my own part.
How solitary is your own
creative process? Do you find that you must "disappear" from your family
and friends to complete a novel?
My own creative process is
very solitary and, yes, at times I am forced by the work to disappear.
This is particularly true during the creation of the first half of the
first draft of a novel when I have not yet truly engaged with the material.
Once I have a fully realized "other" world in my imagination I find I
can slip in and out of both worlds without losing either and, at this
stage, I take great pleasure in both my real life and the narrative I
am working with on the page.
In the early stages of a novel
I have sometimes physically disappeared and have gone away to another
province or country in order to remove myself from the distractions of
daily life. My friends and family are very understanding about this. But
then, of course, they know I always come back.
What was the source of inspiration
for The Underpainter?
The Underpainter was inspired
by many things. I am very dependent on my intuition when a book is being
born in my mind and find that I must follow any ideas, images, histories
that attract my attention. In the beginning I found myself fascinated
by Rockwell Kent's house in Newfoundland which I had spotted across
a bay and later inquired about (not knowing that it had belonged to the
American painter). Not much later a packet of letters written by a Canadian
woman who had been a nurse in the First World War came into my hands.
These were filled with a sense of such sadness and loss that I began to
think about how devastating the effects of that war must have been on
the young men and women who were a part of it. The letters were written
to a young man who operated a china shop in a small Canadian town and
who had also been overseas. This led me to a study of fine china and the
art of china painting. Soon I became interested in exploring the different
forms artistic expression can take; who is given permission to be an artist
and who isn't, and what defines the terms "professional" and "amateur."
Did The Underpainter fall
naturally into the first person? What was the most difficult part of writing
this novel in the first person?
In the beginning I meant to
write the novel about Austin Fraser and as a result the opening chapters
of the first draft were written in the third person. Quite early on, however,
I noticed that the narrative automatically slipped into the first person
once I became involved in the writing. It was as if Austin himself were
demanding to tell the story, and although I would try over and over again
to force the text back into the third person, I finally had to admit to
myself that this wasn't working.
With the exception of a few
very short short stories I had never written in the first person, and
once I accepted that that was the way this particular story should be
told, I was quite intimidated by what lay before me. Not only would I
be writing in the first person but the voice was going to have to be one
quite unlike my own. Surprisingly, however, when I sat down to write I
found that the voice came quite smoothly and naturally. Not only do I
have to "see" what I am writing about—I have to hear the cadence
of the language as well. I had no difficulty with the rhythms of Austin's
voice. They seemed right.
But there was one aspect of
my usual writing style that I had to keep consciously under control, and
that was my tendency to write lyrical prose. This is not to suggest that
the poetic disappeared completely from my writing while I was working
on this novel—-as I've said cadence and rhythm are very important
to me—but I knew that this male character would not be likely to
present himself in a voice that was too exaggeratedly poetic.
Did the narrative of The
Underpainter unfold as you wrote or did you know from the very first page
what Austin's fate would be?
I write the first draft of
any novel very tentatively, feeling my way as I go, and depending to a
great degree on my intuition. I enjoy this process very much in that it
is a bit like how I felt as a child when I was engaged in imaginative
play. Children, you see, never know in advance what is going to happen
when they begin to play with stuffed animals, or a doll house, or toy
soldiers: the drama simply unfolds. And so, when I was working on the
first draft of this novel I did not know for sure what Austin's fate
would be. I knew what I wanted him to do, but I had no idea whether or
not he would do it.
In subsequent drafts the writing
becomes much more conscious, structure plays a much larger role, and the
work becomes more like real work. By the time I was composing the second,
third, etc. drafts I knew how the narrative would unfold and I was therefore
able to alter certain paragraphs and sections earlier in the book in order
to fit the pattern of this outcome.
Did you begin your career
as an artist as a painter or a writer? Why did you choose to focus on
writing?
From the beginning I was always
a writer. I have almost always fictionalized everything—even when
I was a small child. I loved listening to the stories that the grandparents,
aunts and uncles of my large Irish-Canadian family told about their ancestors,
and I loved listening to the stories my father and his prospecting friends
told about life in the forests of Canada. English and History were always
my best subjects in school. In fact, I have often said that I became a
writer because I wasn't suited to anything else: I wasn't interested
in subjects that didn't involve narrative.
The truth is that I didn't
choose writing: it chose me.
What are you writing now?
I am now working on a novel
which takes place in Canada and in France during the years between the
two World Wars and which involves War Memorials and the Roman Catholic
Church. More than this I cannot tell you. I am still in the tentative,
intuitive stage.
Courtesy of Penguin Putnam, Inc.
© Copyright 2009 by Jane Urquhart. Reprinted with permission by Penguin USA. All rights reserved.
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