Writers “Imperfect, Sensitive, Perceptive” : Shelley Pomerance

Great literary writers are imperfectly human like the rest of us, but also usually have sensitive and fragiles natures, noted former CBC Radio arts interviewer Shelley Pomerance at a recent local talk to commemorate World Book and Copyright Day.

“Sometimes we readers have very high expectations of the writers whom we admire,” she said at a talk entitled: “Red Socks, Green Frock, and a Bottle of Whiskey” before about 20 persons at the Dawson Library. “We want them to be as perfect in person as what they’ve put down on the page.”

However, it’s often their foibles and “imperfect, sensitive natures” that perhaps make them such great observers and recorders of human nature. “In their own fragility, they recognize fragility well in other people.”

Early on as an arts interviewer, which Pomerance continued to do for about 25 years, she learned that lesson that writers may be more perceptive than the rest of us, but that doesn’t make them “kind, just, humane, or tolerant.”

Indeed, she had her “bubble burst” on a few occasions and had difficulty reading some authors’ work after interviewing them, such as Maragaret Atwood. “I can’t help but hear that condescending voice.”

Another difficult writer was Mavis Gallant who writes with such “excruciating detail and sense of atmosphere, but with whom her encounters were so difficult that Pomerance hasn’t been able to read her as she did before.

In a different way, the award-winning author Michael Ondaatje is such a private person that “to say that the interview was like pulling teeth was a gross understatement.” Some writers may feel that they’ve said all they have to say in their books, she explained.

Others such as Simon Winchester, who wrote two interesting books about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, was diverted from their “message track” to get into more personal topics by mentioning the “bright red socks” that he wore.

Another was with prize-winning poet Anne Carson who could be “prickly” at times. On one occasion, Pomerance asked her about how it felt when it was announced that she had just won an award. Usually she just felt like going back to her hotel room to share the excitement with her mother, but at that time she had just died.

“It was just one of those moments in an interview when time stops,” Pomerance recalled fondly. When they tell you something like that that’s so personable, you feel like it’s a real act of generosity.”

Asked why she thought that women writers are often more difficult than their male counterparts, she replied that it’s not much of a mystery. To conceal their gender, they have usually written under pseudonyms, such as George Eliot.

“As in many other fields, women have had to work harder to be accepted and become celebrated. In any case, you have to have a tough hide to be a writer and perhaps even a tougher hide to be a woman writer.”

Pomerance may soon discover that for herself, working as a translator and public speaker and aspiring to become a magazine writer.