Reproduction pulls at the ties that bind
Vancouver-based author’s new novel explores the collectives we’re born into or choose to form
Families can be interesting. Whether closely knit or loosely tied, a family unit, with its varying cast of characters, is at once entirely unique and also hauntingly familiar.
These bonds and links of lineage are at the centre of Vancouver-based author and poet Ian Williams’ new book, Reproduction. The story follows two people, Edgar and Felicia, who meet in a hospital room shared by their ailing mothers.
Williams chatted with Postmedia News in advance of the book release about his new title, the “constraints” of family and what’s next. Q What is Reproduction about?
A
The novel is about the families we are born into and those that we choose to form. It’s funny how the choice of two people becomes the constraint of their children. Then those children grow up and make choices and their children are constrained. We all begin from a place of constraint and move toward a place of choice or freedom. That’s a possible narrative.
You could argue that Reproduction is about the futility of resistance to one’s DNA. Or that it’s about the suburbs. Or it’s about the crucial interruptions to our life plans. Or about Felicia’s dignity. About Army’s soaring ambition toward the magnet of wealth. About Edgar and women. About Heather and boys. About Hendrix’s ants. About Riot’s viral video.
Q
You’ve written two books of poetry before. What made this the right time to pen a novel?
A
In addition to the two books of poetry, I’ve written a collection of short stories, so prose isn’t new to me. My pattern has been poetry, fiction, poetry, fiction. I usually explain it as being bilingual. Q Did you face any unique challenges creating a novel?
A
Yup! Six years and 12 drafts of challenges. I wanted a novel that would reproduce itself. In Part 4, you’ll see how I finally got the book to generate a coherent organism resembling itself out of its own material.
But then I wasn’t satisfied with the achievement of creating a book that reproduces itself. I started to ask: can a book encode its own death even as it seems to be growing? Solved that, too. In Part 4, the book both grows and dies. Q What ultimately inspired this novel? A What kept me going on this project was the desire to write characters that we don’t see much of in literature but who are walking around the world. Q The book tackles issues such as love and death, but it largely centres around family. What made you want to write about this, specifically?
A
Next to intimate romantic relationships, family is the site where our deepest concerns play out. Our character formations, the boundaries of acceptable conduct, what we think is possible for our futures, all have root in family. Family is the place where we test our anaerobic strength by our resistance to its structures. We push against its walls. We retreat into it when we want a small-scale community to offset the noise and busyness of the large world.
Also, there’s something comforting about knowing that someone has known you from the day you were born.
Q
Which character in the book is your favourite, and why? A I feel tenderness for them all. Q What do you hope readers take away from Reproduction?
A
First, as a form, the novel is still evolving in surprising, exciting ways. (Second), the ordinariness of life is miraculous. Q What’s next? A The next novel is called Disappointment.