A complex portrait of a complicated literary icon
‘Tiff: A Life of Timothy Findley’ illuminates a new way to understand his work
One of the most significant memories from my past life as a bookseller was the last time I hosted Timothy Findley, for what I believe was the final event on what would become, sadly, his final book tour. Findley was already sick, so frail he had to hold my arm for support as we walked to the stage. Once behind the podium, though, in front of several hundred readers, he was like a man possessed — strong, confident, passionate. He read, he took questions, he signed books and drank wine and embraced friends.
And when the doors were closed, hours later, he could barely walk off the stage. It was stunning, and, beautiful, and brave. That night was a reflection of what we know of Findley: He loved and was loved, he lived a public life, with a huge circle of friends.
While his public-facing nature might seem an obstacle to biographical investigation, Sherrill Grace uses it as the starting point for “Tiff: A Life of Timothy Findley,” an enthralling exploration of Findley’s lives, which is much less interested in salacious revelations than it is in attempting to gain a deeper understanding. As she writes, “Findley was too self-conscious, even in his journals, too wary of bare facts, and far too clever to be captured by a single version of Truth, which makes him all the more intriguing.”
Working with the support of Findley’s longtime partner Bill Whitehead, Grace — who has previously written about Tom Thomson, Sharon Pollock and others — bases her biography not only in Findley’s public actions, including revealing interviews he gave, but also in conversations with his intimates, lengthy examinations of his family history and, most significantly, the voluminous journals Findley kept for the entirety of his adult life. Part of the delight of “Tiff” is following Grace as she reckons with these materials, at times barely able to contain her enthusiasm, while always maintaining a critical distance: “There are obvious lacunae in his journal entries; sometimes many journal pages are left blank, and in a small number of places a few pages have been torn out … Were there things he was unwilling to record? Or was there simply an innocuous reason for abandoning those pages and starting a new journal?”
The result is a complex portrait of a complicated man. Grace chronicles Findley’s battles with depression and alcoholism (the chapters following his years as a journeyman actor in London are particularly harrowing), his struggles with his sexuality, his disappointments with his career and the direction of the world around him, particularly environmental decline and its effect on the planet’s animals.
Threaded through with close readings of Findley’s work, “Tiff” forms an essential re-envisioning of that work through a devastatingly intimate lens, drawing connections between Findley’s family and personal experiences with characters and events in his oeuvre. This re-reading includes such touchstones as “The Wars” and “The Piano Man’s Daughter,” both of which are deeply rooted in Findley’s past; the re-examination serves to enhance Findley’s fiction and elevate its already substantial importance.
“Tiff” is the sort of biography, one imagines, Findley would have liked: one which sends readers back to his books, allowing them to experience his words anew, with a fresh understanding of the life beneath them.