We had a riveting discussion of gender roles in my Human Event class on Tuesday thanks to Virginia Woolf (where half of the class thought that she should get up off of her ass and dust the mantelpiece) and today we had the author of Through Black Spruce in my Canadian Literature class. Joseph Boyden is very handsome, and has an awesome accent (a mix of Cree, Irish, and general Ontario-ness).

My professor told him, though, that I was unhappy with the ending of his novel and he asked me why.
Boyden: Was it too happy? Did it clash with your ideas of Canadian literature?
Devan: Kind of. I thought, about half-way through the novel, that Will would be mauled by a polar bear in an ironic twist of fate. But no. He wasn't.
Boyden: *Laughs* You aren't the first person who's told me that they weren't happy with it..

Later tonight, at his larger reading (with other professors and students), he called me out by saying: "One of Dr. Voaden's students expressed her dislike for the ending, saying that it was too happy, and she was absolutely right." Everyone who was in class today laughed and watched me blush.

I had little to no problems with the novel as a whole, but some of the plot didn't jibe well with Boyden's characterization; in other words, I felt like a lot of what happened didn't fit in with my understanding of each character. As I explained to some of my classmates, I had characters who were a lot like Will and Annie (the narrators) so it was hard for me to keep my biases off of these individuals from different backgrounds. That, and I jump every time I see a storm or a river or an animal in Canadian Lit because, chances are, the people will die a grizzly death. No pun intended.

But Boyden signed my copy for me (and is left-handed!) and it says:
"Devan-- The only way to publish is to write. But you knew that."

Dr. Voaden had told him, before he signed it, that I was a writer and we chatted a bit about NaNoWriMo, because REAL authors are fascinated by the little people's attempts to write. I don't blame them. I try not to make light of writing, although I don't consider NaNoWriMo a light activity. Honestly, it takes the process and crams it into pages in a day, which was one of the most creatively painful experiences of my life. Four and a half years to be working on a novel just sounds like procrastination to me, although I know that it WILL take me that long to write me own, thanks to the inhumanly large amount of research that I will have to do...

Anyway, ranting aside, I enjoyed today and felt inspired. Joseph Boyden is an interesting man with a lot of great life experience, but his writing is no better than mine, his characters no more nuanced. (Although he did say that his characters talk to him and are kind of like children who go from screaming to adolescence, doing whatever they feel like. I could only smile in agreement. And half of the kids in my class don't even know...)

So there is hope for me yet.