Hendrik Doeff

Transcription

set of beliefs than it is now. Therefore, in order to make the book work, in order for it to be plausible, viable, airborne, historical novel, it should be more widely taken for granted that Christianity is actually it. This is the answer. I don't know if it's true, it's true. You die, you go to heaven and you meet your loved ones. And if you want something, then you can pray to God, and he's an interventionist God, and you pray hard enough and he will listen, etcetera, etcetera. DM: Plus it gives me a pretty good propulsion for my third chapter if he's a believer. Because he has to smuggle ashore... He's this very law-abiding, rule-obeying, young man. But when he left Zeeland, he was given a psalter, a Book of Psalms that's been in his family for 200 years. And when the Dutch ship arrived in Nagasaki Harbour, all Christian artifacts... The Japanese both despised and loathed and were afraid of Christianity because of historical reasons. It had sort of fomented the belly, and precipitated the closure of the country. Arriving European ships were obliged to hand over Christian artifacts, crucifixes, books, etcetera, and they would be sealed in a barrel for the duration of the owner's stay, and then given back afterwards. For Jacob, "I can't do this, I just can't do it. It's like spitting on Jesus. I can't. It's like saying my faith isn't real. I can't." DM: So he smuggles it ashore at great personal risk but... Books. Books where you don't notice the page numbers. You don't notice the page numbers because they have a means of propulsion, and that's the book. And also scenes and individual chapters also have a means of propulsion. And I couldn't resist it. I couldn't leave it out. So this sort of my desire to have this day when Jacob's smuggling ashore the book, this truly important book to him, and he doesn't know if he'd be getting away with it or not, and the reader doesn't know if he'd be getting away with it or not, is actually sort of partly dictated who he is. RB: Well, and it also makes it one of the most exciting sequences in the early part of the novel, I'd say, when he actually gets it there. DM: I aim to please Randy, thank you. I wanted to make him uncool. It's quite easy to write someone who's kind of basically Brad Pitt. It's a bit unfair to Brad Pitt because he's done some more interesting things recently but cool is easy. Uncool yet still identifiable with and someone who's uncool who pretty soon wins you over to him or her and you're rooting for him or her, that's the harder thing to do. And why write easy stuff? RB: Let me stay with the question of the novels. Play with history, I guess you could say. You just explained there the kind of aesthetic reason for why it makes sense that Jacob would be a believer but more broadly this is a novel that's full of historical specificities, and I'm wondering if you could just say something about how you sort of dealt with the burden of history itself. This is not a documentary book by any means about 18th century Japanese life so when you're working in such a specific place that has such a sophisticated, intricate structure of ritual and diplomacy and specific names for this, that, and the other how does literary license figure in? How, in other words, do you manage that kind of background work between the cold expectations of history and then the liveliness of literary creation? DM: This is another occasion where that creative writing course might not have been a bad idea. It took me about 18 months to work out the answer to your question. But then once you get the answer it's ludicrously simple that big stuff you can't change. Don't change the dates of the Napoleonic War or the outcome. Otherwise, we would all be speaking French. But small stuff you must make up otherwise you're writing history or biography. Medium-size stuff, one example from the book being in 1808 the British sailed into Nagasaki Harbour a frigate called the HM Frigate Phaeton -- there's a good Wikipedia article if you're interested -- and told the chief resident of Dejima, "I'm sorry, your country no longer exists. It's been annexed by the French," which is true. "We're the British, we are on opposing sides of the Napoleonic War", bearing in mind that these people on Dejima probably hadn't heard of Napoleon at this point. "Therefore, hand over the keys. This is now ours." DM: And the chief resident actually who is an ingenious man called Hendrik Doeff who has more than a little genetic code in Jacob de Zoet, refused and played a brilliant game of poker with no strong card other than Dutch guile. However, that's history, 1808. Book has to start in 1799, last time the Dutch could get out there without sort of Napoleonic Wars starting to interrupt the shipping. I can't have people hanging around for eight years because otherwise it's a two-headed book and I'd have to shift the date so I brought it forward eight years. And this is medium sized stuff. You can tweak but flag your tweaks so instead of the HM Frigate Phaeton it's the HM Frigate Phoebus, Phoebus being the father of Phaeton. So, that's it. Don't change the big stuff, make up the small stuff, and tweak the medium stuff, but flag your tweaks. Flag your tweaks. RB: Flag your tweaks. You heard it here first everyone, flag your tweaks. [laughter] DM: The man who flagged his tweaks. RB: I do have one question that plays to our local audience. How does a wraith-like Quebecois, who's one of the characters in your novel, show up in 18th century Japan? DM: Was he on the Phoebus, I forget, or was he on the Shenandoah, the first ship? RB: It's your book, okay? [laughter] DM: It's my book, but I never read it. I read it and proofread it and proofread it and polish and polish and polish and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, and in the same way, sort of, you can't... RB: But I have to apologize. I said backstage that I will ask you a series of historically-specific questions about the tens of thousands of characters in your fiction. But, I meant it as a joke and then I sort of lied. DM: Every ship, regardless of its nationality was, as Melville notes very well in "Moby Dick", a sort of floating UN. National affiliations very quickly meant very, very little... RB: Right. DM: Onboard a ship. RB: Stowaways and renegades, Melville calls them. DM: Yeah, and there'd be cases in the early 19th century, clashes between the young American Navy and the Royal Navy where British men working on the American ships. Americans working on... But strangely, first loyalty is to your ship, and the crew came from all over the place. The Europeans on Dejima actually came from all over the place. The Dutch invented the multinational corporation amongst other things, the stock exchange, the boom and the bust, the future's fund. Ingenious people. Nature gave them nothing but a big plain of mud, so they had to devise new ways of making money. One of the ways was the Dutch East Indies Company. But, to go out east was dangerous. You had a 4 in 10 approximately chance of dying of bad airs, mal airs, malaria, which was not understood at all within a few weeks of setting foot on Java. If you had anything to lose, you wouldn't take that lottery. You wouldn't take that gamble, and there weren't enough Dutchman with enough to lose to take it. So, they would actually take people from any nation, preferably not the Spanish. Something repeated in the World Cup the other day, but the Dutch won when it mattered in 1588. [laugher] DM: And so this is why on Dejima you've got an Irishman, you've got someone from then the Austrian Netherlands, it became Austrian Netherlands later which is now Belgium, anyway, and the same went for the ships. Hence, the wraith-like Quebecois. RB: I see. Very good.