A Conversation with Peter Behrens
Author of The Law of Dreams
By SHARON GREER
VANCOUVER - The evening of November 2 was a miserable, cold and rainy night as I headed down to the Shebeen at The Irish Heather on Carrall Street. I was on my way to interview Peter Behrens, author of The Law of Dreams (see October issue for review), a recently published debut novel.
It was a lovely and enjoyable evening inside the warmth of the Shebeen as Behrens gave a reading from his wonderful new book. Afterwards I had an opportunity to ask him a few questions.
SG: You've written a wonderful and powerful story. Could you describe your book to our readers, give us a synopsis of the story?
PB: My book is a narrative about the Famine and follows very closely the experience of one young man, Fergus O'Brien. It starts with his family and his life on a remote, mountain farm in east Clare.
It takes place during the height or depth of the Famine in 1846-47 and it follows his journey from Clare, across Ireland to Dublin, on a cattle boat from Dublin to Liverpool - some of his adventures in England in the winter of 1846-47 and finally on a journey across the Atlantic on what came to be known as the coffin ships. He was on a coffin ship from Liverpool to Quebec and to Montreal. And it ends with him.....well, I won't say how it ends.
SG: I understand from the publishers notes that you were motivated to write this particular story because of your background and family history. How did you go about researching your material?
PB: Well, I'll tell you, first of all, I've always imagined my character, Fergus O'Brien, as being my great-great grandfather, of whom I know very little. In fact, all I know about him is that he was an O'Brien and he came from Clare and that he came through Montreal during the Famine years.
I know that much from my grandfather. I don't know that my grandfather knew much more but it was enough to connect me to that path. And when I began writing this book, it began as an exploration or an adventure, trying to figure out or trying to imagine what might have happened to my great-great grandfather and what his experience might have been like walking through that Famine year and finding his way to Canada.
SG: At the beginning of the book you describe dying from black fever - typhus, "The first sign a raging headache." How did you research that part of the Famine? Chambers dictionary describes typhus as, "a dangerous fever transmitted by lice and marked by the eruption of red spots." What kind of detail did you get into on the disease aspect of the Famine?
PB: I got into a lot of detail on it. You know, there is a tremendous historiography (written history) of the Famine, particularly scholars, most of them in Ireland but also in North America and Britain who have done a tremendous amount of great work on the Famine just in the last 20 years.
I think much of it was inspired by the 150th anniversary in 1997 but there is a great, thick body of written work on the Famine and that's where I began my research, by reading those books.
The next stage was going to Ireland and meeting a lot of those people who had written those books. And then it was deciding, I had to get very close to the actual physical country of Ireland, I felt, since my characters lived in very close contact with it. And what that meant was an awful lot of time just walking the hills in east Clare where I knew my characters had lived and getting to know in some fine detail, up close you know, the nature of their country.
Some people have told me I've written a book about how Ireland smells, so maybe I've gotten that in some detail. But, you know, it was through reading the books that are out there. I was trained as an historian so the research was enjoyable and pleasurable to me.
It took a long time but as a writer, you know, in a way research is the fun part of the job, writing is dealing with the blank pages and it is a challenge. I always knew the outlines of the Famine story but I really needed to fill in more than the outlines.
I knew that the people had come out of the west of Ireland and I knew they had come up the St. Lawrence but that's about all I knew. And I needed to know how it all happened, why it all happened and what their day to day experience was like.
And that's what the book tries to give you, it never steps back and paints the history in some scholarly way, or expository way, it's just - you're right there with Fergus, walking through it all.
That's the book's method and what it's trying to do is deliver a visceral experience of this day to day thing, you know, which was dreadful but like all life was not unmixed. I mean there was a lot of less dreadful things mixed in with everything he was going through. He goes through a real journey in all kinds of ways. He meets people, he meets women, he meets life. I want us to just feel we're with him, very closely to the ground with him.
SG: You've probably answered this next question somewhat already but I wanted to ask you about the characterisation of your protagonist, Fergus. He's a fascinating character, a very endearing one and you were able to very cleverly draw your reader in, in a very sympathetic fashion from the beginning because of the extreme predicament that he found himself in - his family has starved to death but Fergus survives. To me this is the essence of your story, The Law of Dreams is ultimately a story of endurance and great spirit. Where did you find Fergus?
PB: Yeah, it is about endurance and spirit. The law of dreams is, keep moving. You know, it's funny, as a writer sometimes a character just starts talking to you and Fergus did. I mean, I just always had his voice. And you know that's a bit of a mystery where that really comes from. I mean, he was just clearly someone I felt very close to. You know, there are probably parts of me as a boy that are in him. I mean, I never went through anything like the Famine.
SG: He's a very sweet young man who is quite naive.
PB: Yeah, he is, he retains a sweetness but in a way he's hardly naive because he has been through some tough stuff.
SG: Yes, but he's still naive, especially about women, which brings me to my next question. Of Fergus' three great loves, Phoebe, Luke and Molly, I had the most sympathy for Luke but I want to ask you about Molly. She was obviously a product of her time. I guess I had the most difficulty understanding her betrayals of Fergus. How was she developed?
PB: I think Molly is a survivor and she is someone who has been treated really roughly all her life. She's kind of like a really tough street cat that comes into your house and you want to pretend that it's going to be a nice tabby and settle down with you 'cause you're so nice to it.
But that cat has learned its ways in a rough world and it's done what it's had to do to survive and it's been as vulnerable as Fergus yet even more vulnerable 'cause she's a girl. She's really had to build these defences that have really taken away all her innocence and replaced a lot of it with guile.
This is what her experience has done to her. I've met people like that and that's what I kind of felt Molly was. I think everybody's kind of a mix of things and I saw some kind of sweetness in her, even a sort of innocence too. She's a kid who's lived on the street for a long time and she's seen people at their worst. She's like Fergus, a survivor, but without his kind of sweetness, it's been taken away from her and it's not coming back.
SG: I'm going to quote you, "My grandfather used to drive past the Black Rock on Bridge Street near the old harbour in Montreal. The Rock marks the mass graves of thousands who died. I remember my grandfather making a Sign of the Cross as we cruised slowly past." Does the Black Rock still exist today? Is it marked with a commemoration plaque?
PB: There's a little park around it and it's on the site where the famine sheds were and I think there's even a little map there marking out the footprint of where the famine sheds are, which is where they cared for people with typhus.
It's much more clearly an historic site now than it was when I was a kid. So you can definitely find it - it's on maps. Anybody of any kind of Irish background, particularly of Irish Canadian background going to Montreal, you definitely have to go to the Black Rock 'cause that's where your gene pool came from, so don't forget it.
SG: Okay and the final question is the title of your book, The Law of Dreams, is interesting. In it you say, "The law of dreams is, keep moving." Is there a double meaning? Are you talking about our actual dreams that we have at night when we're sleeping as well as our projected dreams, our hopes and desires in life?
PB: Yeah, I am, I think I am. It's hard for me to even....it's sort of ineffable to put that in words but it does have that resonance to me and it's probably just very simply, the law of dreams is if you want to survive, you have to keep moving, even in your night dreams. I remember hearing somewhere that if you stop moving in your dreams, you die.
[POSTSCRIPT: It has just been announced that Montreal-born screenwriter and first-time novelist Peter Behrens has been awarded the Governor General's Award for fiction.]
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