Literary Birthday – 29 May – Linden MacIntyre

Happy Birthday, Linden MacIntyre, born 29 May 1943.

Nine Quotes

1. I believe fiction is a totally legitimate and extremely effective vehicle for serious insight into how society works, or serious speculation, serious analysis. The very best of literature over the centuries has been revealing of human nature, social structures, institutions.
2. I usually start with an idea and develop characters. I have a very rough idea of what the plot is going to be in my head but the actual plot just sort of develops as you write.
3. After many years of journalism you learn you have to be able to write anywhere where you have a bit of time. You write on airplanes… I write in the backseats of cars when someone else is driving. I write in hotel rooms, I write wherever I feel I have enough time to actually engage my brain with the project that I have on the front burner at the time. I can write just about anywhere but I write mostly early, early mornings sitting in a little office that I have in a house in downtown Toronto.
4. Injustice will occur whenever, in times of crisis, power rests in the hands of people who have a dark view of history and, more often than not, undeclared agendas that involve consolidating power and wealth.
5. I remember once, when I was starting on TV, somebody asked me if I had fire in my belly, and I said, I hope not. Because fire in the belly sometimes sends smoke up into the brain.
6. Once upon a time a weakness was a challenge to be overcome or hidden. Now we deceive ourselves, thinking that our private weaknesses don’t matter. We reveal them freely, sometimes unsolicited, hoping that our disclosure of vulnerability will be interpreted as a sign of trust and will warrant kindness, or tolerance at least, in return. So naive we are, our sad belief in sympathy.
7. Familiarity is not the same as knowledge. But sometimes it’s the best we can hope for. We can only love or hate what the other seems to be.
8. People often ask how do you write? I say well you just write by writing. You have something in your mind that you want to say but the actual words are not going to come until you’ve literally sat down and made it possible for the words to come to your mind and be communicated.
9. You know what, somebody buys a book; it becomes their property. The story becomes a story that they will figure out, interpret and carry in their minds in a form that’s not always what I would have expected. Or is not always what another reader would necessarily share.

Linden MacIntyre is a Canadian journalist, broadcaster, and novelist. He has won many awards for writing and journalistic excellence, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his 2009 novel, The Bishop’s Man.

Source for photo

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LindenMacIntyreMay2008.jpg

User:Verne Equinox, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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