List of awards and nominations received by Murdoch Mysteries

Transcription

Margaret Cannon: It gives me a great deal of pleasure to welcome Professor Donna Leon tonight. As you know, those of you who follow my column know, I'm a big mystery fan and I do love to read. But I have special writers who have meaning for me beyond just the fact that I love a mystery. There are writers who take me places I want to go and introduce me to people I want to know. And Donna Leon is one of those writers. Like many of you, I read my first Guido Brunetti book and I was smitten, I couldn't get enough. I think it was her fifth novel, I rushed out and bought the others, read them all over one weekend where I think I gorged on junk food, but it was great. I followed him through, I think it's 20 books now, this is the 20th. I've loved every one of them and I can't say that about too many series. In fact, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt, this 20th novel is one of her best. This is a series that has never flagged or failed. MC: Now, Donna Leon comes from New Jersey, but she comes to Venice through a long and winding and interesting history which I'll let you... I'll let her tell you for herself. But when she arrived in Venice, she arrived already as an expert on literature, on music, on opera, she knows about art. She knows about so many things and they all come to life in her novels. And it's one of the reasons why her novels have so much resonance and why they give us so much pleasure. But more importantly, she never lets us get away with just entertainment. In these books, I've learned about the evils of the Italian mafia. The relationship of Italians to immigrants in their society, not so hot. And incidentally, I'll never buy another copy of a purse, one of my great vices up until then. I'm through with that. MC: All of these things... I've learned more than I've... Certainly more than I thought I wanted to know about fascist Italy and the relationship of that history to the modern day: The illegal marketing of children, the problems of Eastern European migrants. All of these things are the subtext of these novels. So we're not just reading for fun, we're learning about some of the great upheavals and the great crises, not just in Italian society, but in our global village. And for all of that, I'm extremely grateful to Donna Leon, and it is my great pleasure to welcome her tonight. [applause] Donna Leon: Everybody else is drinking wine, we get the water? [laughter] DL: My first sample of Canadian hospitality, thank you very much. MC: Welcome to Toronto. [laughter] DL: A dry town. MC: Well, I promise tonight that I'd ask you about how you got to Venice, so you've got to tell them how you got to Venice. DL: I went as a tourist in 1960-something, '68, '69? And when I first went to Italy... My family's Irish: Two Irish grandmothers, and one German, and one Spanish grandfather, so there's no Italian anything in me. But when I went for the first time as a tourist, I fell in love with it the first day because of the warmth, and the generosity, and spontaneity of the people. Then, some months later, I went to Venice and I fell in love with it. I was lucky enough to make the friendship of two Venetians, Roberta and Franco, Roberta Pianaro and Franco Decal, who are still, after 40 years, are my best friends in Venice. In fact, it's Roberta also known as Beeba who is responsible for the recipes in the cookbook, because Beeba is absolutely the best... And Franco as well, they are the best cooks I have ever known. I've eaten more food at their table than I have anywhere else in the world. DL: In '80-something, in '79 or '80, I made the mistake of... For the only time in my life, accepting a job because there was a lot of money. I went and I taught for nine months in Saudi Arabia. I called Beeba or Franco, I can't remember which, at the end of my time there and I said, "I've had enough of being an academic mercenary. It's time to settle down and live somewhere." And so I moved to Venice with no job, no place to live, no nothing. Just all the money I had been paid in Saudi Arabia, which wasn't enough, believe me. [laughter] DL: And within a month I had a job and I had an apartment, and I've been there ever since. And I feel very privileged to be able to live there and I love it. I love living there... Even with all its problem, its monstrous problems, I still feel very privileged to be able to live in Italy. MC: And it was shortly after that... Well, no. It was actually just about eight or nine years after you settled in Venice, that you wrote your first Guido Brunetti novel and that's... There's a great story about that as well. Because it doesn't come out of your interest in Venice, it comes out of your love of opera. DL: Yeah, I was at Teatro La Fenice at a rehearsal of Donizetti's "La Favorite", the French version. It was being conducted by Gabriele Ferro, who's a very good bel canto conductor, Sicilian. He and his wife and I were in the dressing room at La Fenice during a pause in the rehearsal. And one of the three of us started speaking badly about another conductor. And then there was what Italians would call "un escalation". [laughter] No, really. There are some words in Italian that just knock me down. My two favourite are... No, there are three: "Escalation"; "beauty case", which is always pronounced "beauty case"; and then the third word, which leads to great thought is "privacy". There was a law in Italy called "La Legge Sulla Privacy" because Italians do not have a word for "privacy". [laughter] DL: Anyway, we were busy with our escalation [laughter] and the idea came to me that it would be a very good idea for a murder mystery, to write a murder mystery. And I thought that that might be an interesting thing to do. Because I have never done that. And so I said, "Yeah, let me see if I can write a murder mystery." So I wrote a murder mystery. It took me about, I don't know, eight or nine months. And then it sat in a drawer because very luckily, although, I was born in those triumphant Eisenhower 1940 years, I was born in '42, when America had this sense of going forward tra-la-la, I had no ambition. My parents did not give me the vice of ambition. And so all I ever wanted to do in my life was just have a whole lot of fun. [laughter] DL: That has always been my only exclusive and highest goal. And I had a whole lot of fun. I never wanted to write a book. But because I got the idea, I wrote a book. And then two years later, someone nagged me into sending it to a contest in Japan, of all places. And it won. And then I had a book for... I had a contract for two books. So I had to write another book. [laughter] I also hadn't planned into that. And then I got another contract for two more books. And so I found myself, after this time, committed to writing four books. And it turned out to be so much fun, writing these books, that I continued doing it. And have continued to do it. But it was completely accidental. I never agonized over wanting to be a successful writer, wanting to be a writer. I never wanted to be anything. I just wanted to have fun. [laughter] MC: But you fell into such a wonderful character. He's... And you've "peopled" him, he's got so many other wonderful characters around him and they do such grand things. Now, who doesn't know Paola's favourite dessert? [laughter] I'm not gonna humiliate myself by pronouncing it in Italian, the swan thing with cream. What is it in Italian? DL: Il cigno. It's a pastry you can... The best are at Tonolo. The best are at Tonolo, which is a pasticceria on the other side of the Grand Canal, on the non-San Marco side of the Grand Canal. It's a fabulous, fabulous bar/cafe. MC: Which incidentally, has given rise to a whole little... Many of you may know this, but I didn't until a couple of years ago, there are people who conduct tours of Brunetti's Venice. And a friend gave me this as a gift. I recommend this to anyone who's going to Venice, even if you're only gonna be there for 48 hours. [laughter] It has the most... And Tonolo is in it, along with some other fabulous things. And I discovered now... I'm gonna pronounce it, I'm gonna try to pronounce it. His favourite drink is the Spritz? DL: Spritz. 10:10 S1: Which is Aperol, and white sparkling champagne, and, and I think a dash of soda water. Have it anywhere. It's wonderful. It's like drinking Venice. Even here. I brought the stuff back so I could drink it here and pretend... DL: She had four before beginning. MC: Yes. [laughter] Just to get ready for this. And the other thing, which I can't pronounce, are the little bar snacks that he... DL: Cichetti. MC: Cichetti. But these are all gifts from you, from... To those of us who go to Venice thinking that it's going to be like your novels, and it is. DL: Yeah, it is. MC: That's the thing that's remarkable. It's... And how do you make it like it is? DL: It's the only place I've ever lived from the time I... Well, I finished graduate school about six times, I quit graduate school about six times. [laughter] From whenever it was, '78, '79, I believe I never lived on the same continent for more than one year, except for four years in Iran, which were great fun. That was up until the evacuation in '79. But I would change every year because, again, I didn't have that ambition thing. So I could just... When I get tired of a job or a place, I'd just go... I'd change continent. Then in '81, I moved to Venice. And I decided it was time to pretend to be an adult and get a job, and settle down, and get an apartment. And so I did. But it was... Again, it was accidental. If I were more of a hypocrite than I am, I would say, "Oh, I did it for aesthetic reasons. The most beautiful place, and then oh, the art, the culture, blah blah." I did it because my friends Roberta and Franco live there and their families, both of which I had become a functioning member over the course of 15 years, 20 years. And I had always been happy there. I had always had a good time. I had always had a lot of fun and I, but I had... More importantly, I had always been happy in Venice. And so I decided to go to Venice and got lucky because it was easier then to find work and to find a place to live, 30 years ago. MC: Could someone do this now, do you think? DL: Yeah. One could, if one had a lot of money. I could do it then and I didn't have a lot of money, but I could afford to buy an apartment. Someone in my circumstances then couldn't dream of buying an apartment in Venice now, the prices have skyrocketed. The other reason that the books are written about Venice is that it is the only place I know well enough to write about. I lived in Isfahan, Iran. The only places I have lived for a long time as an adult are Venice and Isfahan, Iran where I lived for four years. But that was 30 years ago, so I couldn't write about it. I couldn't write convincingly or persuasively about it because I don't remember it and I obviously, I can't go there and refresh my memory. So I was constrained to write a book set in Venice. So it wasn't a gimmick. I didn't sit and say, "Oh let me try to capture the audience interest in Venice by telling these stories set in Venice." The only place I could describe and know that you go left there and right there, is Venice. It's the only place I've lived really as a grown up. Well, presuming that I am. MC: But your Venice... You say it's fun and you talk about the sort of liveliness of your life and yet, your books are... What always strikes me about them is that they're not about happy situations. You see the corruption underneath all of that beauty very clearly and you have no fear of that, bringing it out. Do people complain? DL: No. No, no. They say, "Why not?" I have, as you've probably have heard some of you, the books are not translated into Italian and will not be translated into Italian. But some Italians, many Italians in fact, have read them in other languages, either in English or French or German. And I've never had any negative response from an Italian. No one has objected to what I say about it. On the contrary, what I have heard is the comment from some Italians, not all but from some, that they find it strange that someone who is not an Italian can have some understanding of Italian responses and Italian behaviour. But I've lived there for 30 years and my friends, with the exception of Toni Sepeda and her companion, my friends are all Italian or Venetian. And so, when we have dinnertime conversation, when people grumble about this or grumble about that, they're grumbling about Venice because that... Venetians grumble about Venice, they don't grumble a lot about, or at least they haven't until the last few years, they haven't grumbled a lot about Italy, but things have become so desperate in the last couple of years that they have begun to expand the compass of their grumbling. But usually, people are grumbling about what's wrong with the city because it has massive problems of every imaginable kind. MC: An Italian friend of mine who is from Rome says that it's very difficult to write fiction in Italy now because reality has overtaken imagination. He says it's just like, "What can you say?" When you look at the front page of the local news, I mean, then trying to construct something that's of the imagination just seem so plain. DL: There was one thing I read... I read the papers every day. There was an article three days ago, as many of you probably do know. Silvio Berlusconi is currently on trial for having used the services of an underage prostitute. Prostitution is not illegal in Italy, but using the services of an underage prostitute, the age is 18, so if she's 17 or 16, it is illegal. The act is illegal. The evidence that has been accumulated by the prosecutors includes copies of transfers of money from Berlusconi to this Ruby Rubacuori, Ruby the heart stealer, is a young... She's now 18. She's a Moroccan dancer I think, she lists her profession as dancer. He is accused of having had sexual congress with her in response for money. And then, he said nothing. Berlusconi always says, "I have never in my life paid for sex." There are bank transfers from a kind of shell company of his or from his lawyer to Ruby. I think the last total I read was something well in excess of 100,000 Euros, and in the paper three days ago, he said that he gave her that money, so that she would not prostitute herself. [laughter] DL: So, then this guy is gonna put me out of business. But people can joke about this business of Berlusconi and the girls, and Berlusconi with what he claims are decorous dinners at Villa Al Corte. But what people outside of Italy don't seem to realize is that this is a man who pretty much tells the Parliament what to do. And they voted yesterday I think, there were 314 votes in favour of his latest maneouver because what he does is introduce laws which work in his favour. And here I'm trying only to be descriptive, not to be judgemental, because it's not my place to be judgemental. I am merely being descriptive. His followers introduce laws which ultimately work to his legal favour and the majority of Parliament still will vote these laws in. And I think this is the... No, I don't think. I know this is the reason for my friends' despair. Because when you own the Parliament, you can do anything you want. Because you just make a... You change the law. You wanna do it, you change the law. You do it and then you change the law. Things are really very, very bad. The economy, from what I hear and what I read, the economy is much worse than it is admitted by what's his name, Tremonti. So Italy could well be the one that breaks the bank for Europe because it's only, I think it's just a baby step behind Portugal. MC: Well, you've written, too, about the... I don't remember the exact book, but you've written about the role of the mafia and it was later written... I think about the same time, the true-life book by Camorra came out about the mafia control of the garbage and medical waste. And I thought, but I read that first in one of your books, which was a shocking, at least to me, a very shocking thing to be going on in an advanced modern country. That in fact, gangsters are making money off of medical waste. DL: Yeah, but excuse me. This is what people out of Italy don't seem to realize. That a vast portion of this somewhat modern country is under the control of the mafia. The mafia is not Joe, what's his name, who runs the pizza parlour on the corner. The mafia is the prevailing political force in much of Southern Italy, and the prevailing religious force in much of Southern Italy. Another thing that people who don't live in Italy don't realize and find very difficult to accept, is the tacit understanding that has always existed between the Vatican and the mafia. The Roman Catholic church has never, boys and girls, condemned the mafia. Never condemned the mafia. Ever. No, what do you call it, ex-communication. No interdict against the mafia. Nothing. In most southern towns, everybody knows on which side everybody stands, and they also know on which side every priest stands. There are anti-mafia priests and very often they are killed, and there are mafia priests and they prosper. And this is something that simply is not known outside of Italy. The only subject I... No, I've had angry letters from readers only about two things. The first is a murder in the book. I had three letters from England from people who were very, very sympathetic and were outraged that I would dare to kill the golden retriever. [laughter] DL: Children, men, women. Scores of human... Poppy. Poppy the human retriever. Sorry, the golden retriever. This pushed people over the edge...