Biography
Born in Michigan and raised in California, Ethan Canin entered Stanford University dead set on an engineering career. Then, in junior year he took an English course that changed the direction of his dreams. Exposed for the first time to the brilliant short stories of John Cheever, he underwent a true epiphany. He changed majors and determined there and then to become a writer.
Canin proved sufficiently gifted to be accepted into the world-famous Iowa Writers' Workshop, but between the daunting competition and a severe case of writer's block, he developed serious doubts about his abilities. Discouraged, he enrolled in Harvard Medical School shortly after receiving his M.F.A. "It was a real failure of the imagination," he confessed in an interview with Stanford Magazine. "I just couldn't think of another job."
Perversely, Canin's muse returned in medical school. A few of his stories appeared in Atlantic Monthly, resulting in a book deal with Houghton Mifflin. In 1988, the short story collection Emperor of the Air was published to glowing reviews. (Writing in The New York Times, critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt observed "The way these stories transcend the ordinariness of human voices is ... startling.")
Canin spent the next few years conflicted over what he wanted to do with his life. He received his M.D. from Harvard and, for a while at least, successfully combined writing with the practice of medicine. But after the enthusiastic response to 1994's The Palace Thief, he found it increasingly difficult to juggle two careers. Finally, after much soul-searching, he made the decision to give up doctoring to become a full-time writer.
Although he is best known for short stories and novellas, Canin has also written full-length fiction -- most notably the deceptively small and spare Carry Me Across the Water, proclaimed by the London Daily Telegraph as "[t]he most wise and beautiful novel of 2001." This story of a scrappy, 78-year-old Jewish-American who sets out to right a tragic mistake from his past is considered by many to be the author's finest work. In 2008, Canin published America America, an ambitious novel John Updike called "a complicated, many-layered epic of class, politics, sex, death, and social history...shuttling between the twenty-first-century present and the crowded events of 1971-72." Begun in early 2001, and stalled after the tragic events of 9/11, the story underwent ten rewrites before Canin finally finished it.
Canin writes slowly and with great deliberation, polishing phrases with grace, elegance, and an accumulation of detail his hero John Cheever would surely approve. Yet, despite his success, he admits that writing for him is hard work. He has repeatedly stated that the process is "exquisitely difficult," a misery rooted in fear and self-doubt. "Fear of failure is what's hard -- it's overwhelming," he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "I'll never get beyond sitting down and saying, 'This is a disaster, this will never work.' "
Yet, "work" it most certainly does! Considered one of our finest writers (in 1996, he was named to Granta's list of Best Young American Novelists), Canin crafts wonderful, mature stories that resonate with timeless, universal themes. He is especially skilled at handling the sensitive, emotional terrain of family life -- growing up, marriage, aging, and the complex relationships between fathers and sons. Small wonder The New York Times has called him "one of the most satisfying writers on the contemporary scene." It's an assessment Canin's many fans wholeheartedly endorse.
Good to Know
Although his parents lived in Iowa City, Canin was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while his mother and father were on vacation.
Canin's father was an accomplished violinist who performed and taught throughout the East and Midwest before accepting the position of concertmaster for the San Francisco Symphony.
Canin was mentored by his high school English teacher Danielle Steel, who read several of his stories and encouraged him to continue writing.
In 1998, Canin joined the faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the scene of his own literary meltdown. He enjoys teaching and finds the environment far kinder and more supportive than it was in his own student days.
Along with fellow authors Po Bronson and Ethan Watters, Canin cofounded the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, a collective workspace for writers filmmakers, and narrative artists.
Canin's novella The Palace Thief was filmed as The Emperor's Club, a 2002 movie starring Kevin Kline.
Some fascinating outtakes from our interview with Ethan Canin:
"I love woodworking and remodeling houses. Our basement looks like a hardware store, and my car is a truck with a ladder rack. I've remodeled three old houses myself, as well as built the backyard office where I write, and I like to do every job at least once, from framing to plumbing to wiring to finish carpentry. It's easier than writing, and the results don't take years."
"In medical school I loved surgery (similar to remodeling houses); in fact, I wanted to be a surgeon rather than an internist but was (reasonably, I think) afraid of the five-year surgical residency with its every-other-night call schedule. Since then, residencies have gotten easier; I sometimes think that if I'd started medical school a few years later than I did, I would have been a surgeon; and if I'd been a surgeon, I'd never have quit to become a writer."
"Playing softball is perhaps my favorite thing to do in the world. Since my childhood summers, which I spent from dawn to dusk on the local baseball diamond, I've always been more glove than bat. I've just always loved fielding, its most graceful combination of thought, luck, and intimate cooperation. Baseball metaphors have been overdone by writers, but there really is nothing like the pivot moment of a double play, or a rising, one-hop relay to the plate, or-in that most graceful of executions-the tightening noose of a three-fielder, choreographed, role-revolving run-down."
"I've always been a pragmatic and physical thinker, starting even before I studied engineering in college. One of my concerns with our culture at the moment is the way in which we've detached ourselves from a physical understanding of our essential inventions. I know nothing more about the operation of a microchip than that it works, and that if it breaks it has to be replaced. Almost nobody does; and nobody can repair one without a set of machines that are themselves built from microchips. I can't picture its gears; I can't, in a pinch, substitute something else in its place, the way as a teen-ager once, on a car trip over the Sierras, I substituted a sock and two pieces of string for a broken engine hose.
Likewise, I'm concerned that our culture has detached itself from our common social purposes. Money, once the reward for achievement, has become the achievement itself. This, in my opinion, is as dangerous a trend as any we face.
"I started America America in early 2001. After 9/11, I stopped working on it for a full two years, and when I came back I was motivated to make it a more overtly political story. History, politics, the nature of power and its costs-all these subjects were occupying my mind.
This novel was brutally difficult. But they all are. That's not news. I nearly gave up any number of times. I wrote a good ten drafts, but it wasn't till perhaps the seventh or eighth that, while teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, I had a student turn in a story he'd re-written in such a way that I realized exactly what I needed to do on my own novel."
Feature Interview
In Summer of 2008, Ethan Canin took some time out to talk with us about his favorite books, authors, and interests. What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer -- and why?
In college, I began as an engineering major. I was taking physics and math and not much else. I thought that the humanities, and certainly the arts, were for the soft-minded; I certainly would never have strayed near an English class. Then one day I happened upon a big red book called The Stories of John Cheever. I was waiting for someone and just found the book on a shelf; I sat down and read the first story, called "Goodbye, My Brother." From that point on, I wanted to be a writer.
What are your ten favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
I could never list my favorites, but I could list some of the ones that have been most influential to me as a writer. In no particular order:
Mr. Bridge, by Evan Connell. An unusual novel that's been sharpened to a gleaming set of points. Funny. Painfully observant. Utterly delightful.
At Play in the Fields of the Lord, by Peter Matthiessen. Such a broad and ambitious and entertaining novel. It expanded my own ambition as a writer.
Libra, by Don Delillo. A powerful lesson in the compelling narrator. The deep and dark point of view is magnetic.
Open Secrets, by Alice Munro. Contains "Carried Away," one of my favorite stories of all time, and several other splendid examples of Munro's groundbreaking work. It can be confusing on the first reading, but the closer one looks, the more the book yields-a testament to the seriousness of the art.
Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow. "Warn the Duke," a throwaway line of dialogue early in the novel, is a wonderful plot bomb that explodes only after one has finished the book. A great lesson in plotting.
Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow. First showed me the value of mixing philosophical cogitation with pacing tigers. The energy of the prose is unequaled.
Sacred Hunger, by Barry Unsworth. A glorious novel. Showcases the power of lyricism to transport a reader to another time and place, in this case, to an 18th century slave ship in the south Atlantic. Beautiful, brutal, and intelligent.
American Pastoral, by Philip Roth. The sheer power of the middle section of this book will always be with me. An anguishing story not only about our country, but about fatherhood. Written by a man who never had children, I might add.
Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. First taught me that the dark narrator is the compelling one.
The Deptford Trilogy, by Robertson Davies (Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders). A magnificent set of novels-ranging, broad, adventurous-about magic, Jungian psychology, and the generation-spanning effects of a poorly thrown snowball. The Stories of John Cheever. The book that first made me want to write. The elongated rhythms of the sentences. The landscape-like beauty of the prose. I don't know if any other prose writer has equaled Cheever's pure talent for sound.
What are some of your favorite films, and what makes them unforgettable to you?
You Can Count on Me, directed by Kennerth Lonergan. I loved it the first time I saw it, and it still holds up. A movie that runs on words and character, rather than on pictures. Mark Ruffalo is fabulous in this early role as the wayward brother. And the movie contains a great fight scene that is as awkward and stumbling as real violence, at least, real violence of the amateur variety.
The Godfather, Parts I and II. What's not to like? The physical beauty. The complex plotting. The memorable characters. And Diane Keaton so perfectly cast as the outsider. Sunshine, directed by Istvan Szabo. A major work, following the story of three generations of Hungarian Jews, from the early 20th century through the rise of Communism. Ralph Fiennes plays the scion of each generation.
Hannah and Her Sisters. There have been any number of wonderful Woody Allen films, but I've always been partial to his serious ones, and this one, to me, is still the best of them all. As character-driven and richly populated as a big literary novel.
Groundhog Day. A classic.
Nashville and Short Cuts, Robert Altman's groundbreaking experiments in story structure.
2001: A Space Odyssey. Parts of it are dated today, but I've always loved Kubrick's ballet of planets and rocketships; and the transition from the first part of the movie to the second-that bone spinning up into the air-is probably my favorite moment in all of cinema.
The Barbarian Invasions, Denys Arcand's terribly moving juxtaposition of the old and new generations, told through the story of a dying bon-vivant left-winger and his capitalist son.
Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, a visual tribute to the Texas Panhandle (even though the film was actually shot in Alberta, Canada) that will move you to silence; and Sweet Land, directed by Ali Selim, whose similar tribute to the farmland of the northern midwest (and actually shot there!) will do much the same. What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you like to listen to when you're writing?
I grew up in a highly musical family. My father was a professional musician, as were most of my uncles, and there was rarely quiet in my house. Perhaps that's why I listen to less music now than most people. But when I'm working on a particular book, I'll sometimes focus on a single piece and listen to it over and over. It's usually classical. For my novel Carry Me Across the Water, it was Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet. For America America, it was the Bach Cello Suites. When I write, I can't listen to anything with lyrics.
What are your favorite kinds of books to give -- and get -- as gifts?
Believe it or not, I like reference books. Visual dictionaries are a particular favorite of mine (and are invaluable references for writers). I also love historical timelines, biographies, and how-to books on wood-working and building.
Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing?
Above my desk I keep a 4' X 8' sheet of extruded polystyrene foam (also known as pink rigid insulation), which I use as a pin-board to display the index cards that I make for each scene. It's the only way for me to keep a complex novel comprehensible. I color-code the plot lines.
I also make sure to write in the morning because I fear writing. This way, fear only ruins the first part of my day.
Many writers are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes?
This is my sixth book, and anybody who's written six books, published or not, has struggled. In my twenties, after writing perhaps half a dozen short stories, I came to the conclusion that I'd failed as a writer. Since I'd already had a great deal of scientific education, I decided to go to medical school. When I finished medical school, I did an internship in internal medicine and earned my physician's license in the state of California. But then, after a great deal of thought, I decided to go back again to writing. At that point, I was if anything even more aware of the difficulty of a writing life, and of its long odds-but I'd also been reminded, by my time in medicine if nothing else, that life is a tenuous bet anyway.
What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?
What I sometimes tell my students is that for every new writer struggling to be discovered, there's also a young editor, freshly arrived in New York, struggling to discover a new writer.
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