Claudia Casper

Claudia Casper’s acclaimed first novel, The Reconstruction, was published by Penguin in 1996. Her most recent piece was the short story “Victory,” which appeared in the bestselling anthology Dropped Threads. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and two young sons.

1. How did you come to write The Continuation of Love by Other
Means? How did it get started?

I started a novel about a father and daughter fifteen years ago,
before I wrote _The Reconstruction_, but shelved it after six
chapters. Then I read Dancehalls and Highways by Diana
Atkinson, and was struck by the relationship between the main
character's abandonment by her father and her complete
unprotectedness in the world when she reached sexual maturity and
became a stripper, her bravado and vulnerability, and her
inability to establish boundaries. I had always been interested
in the sexual power strippers have, and how unstable that power
is, how quickly it can become a liability when faced with
predatory behaviour. Also I've always been intrigued by the
Persephone myth. I wanted to explore the story of the maiden
going into the underworld, the world of the older dominant male,
and a certain wildness Persephone has after this. She is no
longer simply her mother's daughter; she gains a kind of wild
power, a freedom to travel in both worlds, a freedom denied to
both her mother and Hades. So, how females experience freedom,
and the lack thereof. The eating of the pomegranate seed seems
both an act of rebellion and an embracing of experience, and the
risk and loneliness that go with it. What price did she have to
pay? What did she gain? Was it a taste of wisdom, heaven,
completion, or was it a terrible banishment from light? An early
working titles for this novel was Eating the Pomegranate, which
I abandoned because I wanted a title that reflected both the male
and female characters of the novel, and because suddenly the
Persephone myth was popping up everywhere.

When I started I knew I wanted a character who got stuck in a
squeeze while spelunking. I knew I wanted to include the unstable
sexual power of the young woman. I wanted to write about
reproduction and the cognitive dissonance between the intensely
dedicated, unselfish love a parent feels, and the intellectual
understanding that one is engaged in reproducing one's species, a
biological imperative. I wanted to explore our reproductive
behaviour as it compared with that of other animals, particularly
in relation to the separation of gender. I wanted to explore some
of the connections between reproduction and war (which in the end
I only touched on). I wanted to write about clothes, how bound up
they can be with our sexual identities, our identities in
general. I wanted to write about a self-made man, an adventurer,
an immigrant to the new world at the old king/silverback stage of
his life. I wanted to write a scene in which a woman gives birth.
It took a long time to discover the way all these were connected.

2. The novel ends with an epilogue in which Carmen is hit and
killed by a car. What sort of thought and rationale went into
your decision to end the novel like that (and with her husband
and son witnessing the sea lions)?

The idea for the epilogue started with the image of headlights
shining on the ocean on a snowy night, and what might be revealed
by that beam of light. The image of headlights is first
introduced when Alfred challenges his father to a race, and his
young running body is illuminated from behind by the beam of his
father's motorcycle headlight. The light that cavers wear on
their helmets produces a beam of light that illuminates only what
it shines on, so Alfred sees the world this way when he's
exploring. Later Alfred's headlights illuminate Carmen's back as
she refuses to ride with him and walks ahead by herself. I find
the image of bodies illuminated from behind walking away from a
light source, and a human witness, compelling. The epilogue is
the narrator leaving the story, the characters, the reader. The
lights go down on individuals, but life continues. Also I wanted
to include two lifespans in the novel, a male and a female, but
the story was over when Carmen gave birth to Catharine and
finally came to terms with her father. I wanted the trajectory of
the story to aim past Carmen to the next unknown generation, to
point the reader's consciousness that way at the end of the book.

3. You also had your short story, "Victory," published in the
anthology Dropped Threads. Do you routinely divide your time
between writing short stories and writing novels?

With only two novels finished, it is probably premature to talk
about doing anything routinely. However, writing a novel is like
carrying a very large, heavy suitcase in your brain, whose
contents you have to memorize and rememorize over and over until
you can hand it to someone else. Now that I've finished The
Continuation of Love By Other Means, I hope I will be able to
spend a year writing shorter pieces, so the mental burden will be
lighter, or at least of shorter duration. It is difficult,
though, to predict what will come when I approach my desk with
the next block of writing time. I plan to write a short piece
about a trip I took to Ottawa with my sons and my mother last
year to meet Romeo Dallaire, before I start anything else.

4. What is one of the best books, old or new, that you have read
in the last year? What did you like about it?

All Families Are Psychotic, by Doug Coupland, and The Lovely
Bones, by Alice Sebold. Along with a plethora of articles in
Harper's, which has been the most outstanding publication of
the year. I delighted in Coupland's humour, his creative and
contemporary use of the English language, his wide-arching, out-
of-left-field story-line and the unjudgmental compassion that
underlies all his writing. I have a somewhat stubborn and
contradictory side and so was prepared not to like The Lovely
Bones, as it has been such a huge success. I found the beginning
too painful and balked at following where Sebold was taking me,
so I skipped to the end and read backwards for four or five
chapters, then returned to the beginning. The journey Sebold
takes us on, from the rape and murder of a child to a place of
acceptance and love and embracing life, without flinching at or
glossing over anything, is a remarkable feat. Her narrative was
deft and sure-footed, and she achieved impeccably the maxim
"show, don't tell."