101 Letters to a Prime Minister (2 page)

T
his is a book about books. It takes the form of a series of letters. The letters were written by a Canadian writer—me—and sent to a Canadian politician, Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In each letter I discuss a literary work. A novel, a play, a poetry collection, a religious text, a graphic novel, a children’s book—the range is wide. I mailed a copy of each work, dated, numbered and inscribed, with the accompanying letter neatly folded inside its front cover, to the Prime Minister’s office in Ottawa.

Politely and unfailingly, I did this every two weeks from April 16, 2007 to February 28, 2011; a total of 101 letters accompanying the gift of slightly more than 101 books. Many books, many letters, one essential question hovering throughout: what sort of mind, nourished by what, do we want our leaders to have? My argument is that literature—as opposed to factual non-fiction—is an essential element to a deeply thinking, fully feeling mind in our complex twenty-first-century world. A mind not informed by the thoughtful product that is the novel, the play, the poem, will be capable perhaps of administering the affairs of a people, maintaining the status quo, but not of truly leading that people. To lead effectively requires the capacity both to understand how things are and to dream how things might be, and nothing so displays that kind of understanding and dreaming as literature does. That is my argument, and it is for Canadians, whether regular readers of literature or not, to decide where they stand on the issue.

Does literature make for character, or is it mere entertainment? That is the question.

I received seven replies in total. The first came promptly:

A long, official silence of nearly two years followed. Then, unexpectedly and in a jumbled order, I received a quick series of four responses, as follows:

For Books 53 and 54,
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
, by Yukio Mishima, and
Louis Riel, A Comic-Strip Biography
, by Chester Brown:

For Book 51,
Julius Caesar
, by William Shakespeare:

For Book
55
,
The Gift
, by Lewis Hyde:

For Book 52,
Burning Ice: Art & Climate Change
, a collaboration organized by David Buckland and the Cape Farewell Foundation:

In addition, two of the writers who stepped in to supply the Prime Minister with books when I was not able to do so myself, namely Charles Foran and Alice Kuipers, each received a reply:

For Book 81,
Diary of a Madman
, by Lu Xun:

For Book 85,
How I Live Now
, by Meg Rosoff:

I noted in these responses my correspondents’ consistent use of initials, with the exception of the very first one, from Susan I. Ross, Assistant to the Prime Minister. Of those that followed from the Executive Correspondence Officers, it was never a Sarah, a Lawrence Andrew or a Penny who replied to me, but always an S., an L. A. or a P. I suppose this gender anonymity accommodated the sensibilities of Canadians to whom it might make a difference whether a reply to their letter
to the Prime Minister came from a man or a woman. The effect it had on me was to make clear that the stranger who was writing to me wanted to remain a stranger. And of course each letter is quite formulaic, an acknowledgement rather than a response.

Seven form replies from deputies, ninety-four wilful acts of silence—and not a peep from my intended co-reader. It was a lonely book club. I started it in a moment of frustration. In late March 2007 I was invited to Ottawa to help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts, that towering institution that has done so much to foster the cultural identity of Canadians. The celebrations turned out to be a very pleasant affair, but mostly because of the fellow artists present, fifty in all, of every discipline and tendency, a rainbow of writers, painters, composers, musicians, choreographers and others, each representing one year of the Council’s fifty. I was the representative for 1991, the year I received a Canada Council grant that allowed me to write my first novel,
Self
. I was twenty-seven years old and the money was manna from heaven. I made those eighteen thousand dollars last a year and a half (and considering the income tax I have paid in the wake of the success of my second novel,
Life of Pi
, this initial investment by Canadian taxpayers has been well worth it). The eldest artist there, representing 1957, was Jean-Louis Roux, great man of the theatre; the youngest was Tracee Smith, an aboriginal hip-hop dancer and choreographer who had just received her first grant. It was a thrill to be among such a varied gaggle of creators.

The key moment of the celebrations came at 3 p.m. on March 28. We were sitting in the Visitors’ Gallery of the House of Commons, waiting. To those Canadians who haven’t been, I must mention that the House of Commons, and indeed Parliament Hill as a whole, is an impressive place. It’s not just
the size of the chamber, its grand design and ornate decoration; it’s the symbolism of it. A large part of the history of our nation has been played out within its four walls. While a practical venue, with functional desks, powerful, selective microphones and discreet television cameras, it’s also a space of dreams and visions where we Canadians have worked out who and what we want to be. So there I was, in the House of Commons, wowed by the place, and I got to thinking about stillness. I guess the word popped into my head because the unsettling brawl of Question Period was just coming to an end. To read a book, one must be still. To watch a concert, a play, a movie, to look at a painting, one must also be still. Religion, too, makes use of stillness, notably with prayer and meditation. Gazing upon a lake in autumn or a quiet winter scene—that too lulls us into contemplative stillness. Life, it seems, favours moments of stillness to appear on the edges of our perception and whisper to us, “Here I am. What do you think?” Then we become busy and the stillness vanishes, but we hardly notice because we fall so easily for the delusion of busyness, whereby what keeps us busy must be important and the busier we are with it, the more important it must be. And so we work, work, work, rush, rush, rush. On occasion we say to ourselves, panting, “Gosh, life is racing by.” But it’s the contrary: life is still. It is we who are racing by.

The moment had come. The Minister for Canadian Heritage, Bev Oda at the time, rose to her feet, acknowledged our presence and began to speak. We artists stood up, not for ourselves but for the Canada Council and what it represents. The Minister did not speak for long. In fact, she had barely started, we thought, when she finished and sat down. There was a flutter of applause and then MPs turned to other matters. We were still standing, incredulous.
That was it?
Fifty years of building Canada’s dazzling and varied culture, done with in less than five minutes?
I remember the poet Nicole Brossard laughed and shook her head as she sat down.

I couldn’t quite laugh. What would the equivalent celebration of a major cultural institution have been like in France, say? It would have been a classy, year-long, exhibition-filled extravaganza, with the President of France trying to hog as much of the limelight as possible, that’s what. But there’s no need to go into further details. We all know how the Europeans do culture. It’s sexy and important to them. The world visits Europe because it’s so culturally resplendent. We Canadian artists, by contrast, were standing like dolts in a public gallery, getting in the way of more important business. And the thing is, we didn’t even ask to be there. We were invited.