Calgary author penned letters from ‘Juliet’ to lovelorn
Calgary travel writer bares his battered heart in Juliet’s Answer
Like any good travel writer, Glenn Dixon had it all mapped out.
For his third book, he was going to follow a similar formula to his first two: Travel the world and get a global perspective on a big, universal topic. It’s what he did for 2010’s Pilgrim in the Palace of Words: A Journey Through the 6,000 Languages of Earth, and again with 2013’s Tripping the World Fantastic: A Journey Through the Music of Our Planet.
For his third travel book, he would tackle a subject writers have been tackling since the advent of the written word: Love.
So he wrote a sample chapter. It chronicled his 2014 adventures in Verona, where he participated in a curious cultural phenomenon based around Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Dixon volunteered as the sole male “secretary” for Juliet, joining a group of Italian women who answer missives sent from sad, lonely and lovelorn letterwriters from around the world seeking advice from the Bard’s doomed heroine. These days, the “House of Juliet” receives thousands of letters. Every single one is faithfully answered, Dear Abby-style, by this team.
It was a great hook: The cynical, male travel writer falls under the spell of this seemingly corny enterprise. But it was meant to be one chapter in a much broader book that would have sent the Calgarian on a globe-trotting quest to find universal truths about love.
“It would be different chapters from around the world,” says Dixon, in an interview from his home in Calgary. “I had it all worked out in my mind ... I was going to talk about love around the world and different aspects, like marriage rituals and things like that. That all got derailed.”
Dixon has his literary agent to thank for the book’s change in focus. Juliet’s Answer: One Man’s Search for Love and the Elusive Cure for Heartbreak (Simon & Schuster Canada, 290 pages,
$24.99) still begins with that sample chapter. But the heart of the book became Dixon’s broken heart. It turns out, that initial journey to Italy was partially in response to the writer’s own romantic mishaps, specifically a long-lasting case of unrequited love he suffered through involving a woman he calls Claire in the book.
That is what sent him to Verona in the first place and inspired him to write his own letter to the fictional Juliet. We won’t include any spoilers here, but the story eventually involves a return trip to Italy and a romantic twist worthy of a Hollywood rom-com.
“I started writing this book only to find that this book was writing me in a way,” Dixon says. “Half way through, things just kind of took off.”
Still, none of this had happened yet when Dixon dutifully set out to turn that Verona chapter into a larger memoir at the request of his agent. Initially, he busied himself writing other aspects of the book, including funny sections about his experiences teaching Romeo and Juliet to precocious Grade 10 students in Calgary. There are snippets about the science of love and attraction, the history of Shakespeare’s most famous romantic tragedy and some travelogue about the city.
But it was his return trip in 2015, ostensibly for more research, that led to a love story nobody was expecting, Dixon least of all.
“At this point, (my agent) was phoning me just about every day asking, ‘Now what’s happening? Now what’s going on?’” Dixon says with a laugh. “And I would say, ‘Oh my God, you wouldn’t believe what is happening now.’”
The writer, who left teaching two years ago to write full-time, has always inserted himself into his books. But for his previous two, they were as a narrator and cultural outsider who largely let his subjects tell their stories. For Juliet’s Answer, he was required to put his own battered heart out there for all to see, not to mention include intimate details that involved other people in his life. It was a daunting process.
“Let’s put it this way: there were some very, very difficult scenes to write,” Dixon says. “At that point I had to take a step back and say ‘ What exactly are you doing here? Do you want to be a writer? Because this is what it means to be a writer. You have to put yourself out there. Do you have the courage to do that? The gumption to do that?’ I think my agent was leading me in this direction too. If you are going to write this book, write this book honestly and truthfully with all the warts and everything.”
It paid off. Juliet’s Answer is Dixon’s first book with Simon and Schuster and his first to receive international attention. It will be released in the U.S. in time for Valentine’s Day. Rights have been sold for Australia and New Zealand, and it will be translated into Chinese, Spanish and Serbian.
Given its rom-com leanings, it wouldn’t be surprising if Hollywood came calling. Dixon’s agent is pursuing that angle as well.
“I don’t really know that end of it, but I think it would be great,” Dixon says. “I was joking with the agent about who would play me. I said Brad Pitt, of course. She said ‘Then I think it’s mandatory I be on set to make sure he’s doing his lines properly.’”
If you are going to write this book, write this book honestly and truthfully with all the warts and everything.