Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

from Dawn Marie Knopf, Interview: Michael Ondaatje: from Archives to Page

Did you study forensics for Anil's Ghost ?

I did study some aspects of all these things. An example would be in The English Patient—I didn't know Kip would be emerging in the book. Once he did, I had to find out about bomb disposal, but only up until 1943. The thing about research is that if you have too much, it exists obviously in the book, so modest research is better in some way. It's like having a glimpse at somebody in a house—there's something more enigmatic about it and that allows you to invent a life as opposed to that same person telling you his or her life story in great detail. What I discovered was that if I am writing a technical or mechanical scene, what holds the scene together is not, in fact, the technique, but the emotion of the character. So if Kip is freezing or very cold when he is in the pit, that is what convinces you that it's an authentic scene rather than having it containing certain kinds of fuses and so forth.

...

Do you use fiction to get any closer to the truth?
It's probably not the actual truth but some kind of emotional truth. When I wrote Running in the Family, I was writing about my family—a family I didn't know that well. I didn't know my grandmother. In the case of my father, I left when I was eleven and I never saw him again, so I needed to create a family portrait using a lot of guesswork. Running in the Family is the only book of mine that I needed to try out on my older siblings first. And they recognized the family in the portrait, which was a relief. But I think it is a fictional portrait, and at the same time, emotionally, it's been useful to me and my siblings and to other people as well—people in other parts of the world in an entirely different cultural landscape say "that is so much like my family." So the book is telling the truth in some way, accepting it with some necessary order, even though it is a tenuous order.

...

For more of the interview with Michael Ondaatje as well as other writers, pick up your copy of Issue 47.