419 by Will Ferguson

Will Ferguson was born in Fort Vermillion, Alberta, in 1964. He studied film production and screenwriting at York University in Toronto, and following graduation he taught English in Japan for five years. He is best known for his humorous writings about Canadian history and culture, and for his travel themed works. He has won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humor three times. He now lives in Calgary with his wife and two sons. His novel, 419, won the $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2012.

The title, 419, refers to the section of Nigerian criminal code that deals with email scams, and at least at some level, these scams form the unifying thread to which the varied components of the four personal trajectories that make up this book cling for significance. The book reads like one part Heart of Darkness, peppered with a bit of Stockholm syndrome and a dash of Luigi Pirandello, all set in a dystopian travel guide to Nigeria, and especially to the internet sweatshops of Lagos. The story of Winston, the scammer, probably provides the most engaging and sustained narrative, while the stories of Nnambi and Amina, characters who are only introduced 150 pages into the text, seem superfluous and contrived. As for the Laura story, as she tries to avenge her father's suicide, committed in response to being victimized by Winston, I was not convinced by her motivations, her actions, her interactions, or the other members of her family.

I think it is fair to suggest that this book represents Ferguson's first genuine foray into the genre of literary fiction. On its own, I find it difficult to imagine that 419 would be judged as deserving of Canada's most lucrative literary award. So, was Ferguson being rewarded on the basis of his ability to switch genres and produce what many reviewers deemed to be a credible product, or was he being rewarded on the basis of his output to date? Who knows? At least from my perspective, he should stick to humor.

CanLit Adventure

Recently, I won three books in a contest run by Access Copyright, a not-for-profit agency with the mandate to ensure that Canadian authors, artists, and publishers receive fair compensation when their works are copied. The three books were all major award winners: Tamas Dobozy's Siege 13 (Thomas Allen, 2012), winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, Will Ferguson's 419 (Viking, 2012), winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Linda Spalding's The Purchase (McLelland and Stewart, 2012) winner of the Governor General's Prize for Fiction.

Now, let me be brutally honest about my relationship with Canadian literature. When I entered the contest, I had no idea of who these authors were, what they had written previously, or what works they had beaten out to win these prizes. Having attended high school in the 1960s, my introduction to CanLit was more in the nature of the force fed diet of standard works that typified pedagogy and national identity maintenance at the time. So, I dutifully slogged my way through early Margaret Atwood (The Edible Woman), Margaret Laurence (The Stone Angels), Robertson Davies (A Mixture of Frailties), and Mordecai Richler (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz). After that, when I read literature, as opposed to popular fiction, it was more often than not either British, or translations of German and Russian works. My tastes over the past few years have shifted more towards the Middle East.
So, by way of engaging in a sort of reclamation of national literary identity, I am embarking on an adventure in CanLit. I am determined to read all three of these prize winning books in their entirety (something I found it difficult to do in the sixties) and publish reviews on this blog.
On a final note, as a Canadian writer of non-fiction (although I am working on my first novel), I was happy to get my check from Access Copyright. At the very least, it signals that someone out there is aware of what I have written.