I’ve previously posted admiring notes about Carol Shields,1 who authored ten novels, including The Stone Diaries, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General’s Award. She also published four collections of short stories, a number of plays, books of poetry, criticism, and a biography of Jane Austen.
Carol Shields CBC Interview
I recently happened onto this interview Shields gave to the CBC2 which the network’s guide describes thusly: In February 2000, she [Carol Shields] spoke candidly to Writers & Company host Eleanor Wachtel about her illness and how it changed her writing.
It is a poignant, unsentimental dialog that has an impact beyond dealing with cancer or writing books, touching on what it means to be human. In one of my postings that mentioned Carol Shields, It Must Be Great Fun To Be Meme To Me, I wrote
I’ve been an unabashed fan of Carol Shields since I read The Stone Diaries. Julie,3 my wife, attended a two week creative writing workshop in an especially inhospitable winter setting just to work with Carol Shields and the two of them maintained a correspondence until Julie died from breast cancer in 1999. While I’ve looked forward to reading Unless, which I’ve owned for at least two years, I have been unwilling, thus far, to actually begin it simply because it is the author’s last book. Carol Shields died, also of breast cancer, in 2003.
The interview can be found at Carol Shields on living with cancer
Carol Shields On Julie’s Death: In the shadow of her old illness
Two or three weeks after Julie died, I sent, as she had requested, perhaps a dozen messages notifying individuals not in our intimate circle of friends and family. I did not recognize most of these names, but, of course, did know about Carol Shields. At that time, I knew Julie had admired her and had taken a workshop with her but did not realize they had carried on a correspondence. Shortly after sending that letter, I received her reply.4
Updated
Additional material from Unless by Carol Shields has been added at Madeleines From Reading Unless by Carol Shields
Footnotes
- For example, in Carol Shields and Neruda at the Heck Of A Guy Internet Sunday Salon, I set forth the definitive statement on the comparative styles of Carol Shields and Pablo Neruda, which, not incidentally, is also the only direct comparison of those two writers that I have found and provided a link to an online source for her short story, “Mirrors.” As the title hints, this post also includes a brief discussion of and a link to a group of Neruda’s poems. Reviewing Carol Shields and Neruda at the Heck Of A Guy Internet Sunday Salon, I immodestly rate it a dandy Sunday post, featuring as it does the moving words of these two readily accessible, highly skilled authors writing about love and encourage anyone who hasn’t seen it to give it a quick read.↩
- In the same search, I also found Carol & Cohen, which reports that the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School put some moves to moody Leonard Cohen tunes in an opening night sure to shake up this year’s Carol Shields Festival of New Works. The annual fest of all things theatre takes a new turn this year to present a poetic new dance work at its kickoff gala May 24 at Prairie Theatre Exchange. I’m convinced that the alignment of two of my favorite Canadian artists, Carol Shields and Leonard Cohen, via a festival I didn’t know existed and a medium, dance, which is also a mystery to me must be significant but the meaning escapes me. Readers with expertise in interpreting tea leaves, goat entrails, Ouija boards, etc. are invited to render suggestions.↩
- Julie was my much-beloved, fiercely smart, extraordinarily sexy wife, who died in 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. She was also a prize-winning writer. This blog includes many other posts about her and the unlikely but true story of our romance (See Julie FAQ) as well as several of her short stories and other pieces (at Julie’s Writings and Unpublished Julie.↩
- Text copy of letter from Carol Shields on the death of Julie Showalter:
9 January 2000Dear Allan,
Your letter has just reached me here in England, and I was heartbroken to hear about Julie’s death. I did know, of course, that she felt herself to be in the shadow of her old illness - and I admired, so much, her ability to set that aside and continue with her writing.
Her writing had such promise, and I remember that I responded to it particularly because of its wit, which is rather more rare than you might think. She had a very quiet control over her work, but the humour was always close to the surface, part of her vision of the world. She also brought to our small class the kind of generosity and good will that such a group requires. She also contributed much needed maturity and balance. Well, I adored her - as I am sure hundreds did.
This will be a hard time for you, Allan, and for the boys. My thoughts will be with you. This has been my year to learn about health problems, too - breast cancer and then a heart condition. I will think of Julie as my example of courage. Blessings to you all and thank you for writing.
Carol Shields (Signature) ↩
