sewn paper
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FICTION / Literary
September 2007
96 pages
EAN 978-0-88984-294-6
$16.95
Smuggling Donkeys
David Helwig
A retired teacher surviving a hard winter on memory and jokes
finds that life still has surprises in store for him. Warren Thouless, recently retired teacher, long-retired actor,
aspiring thinker, stuffed up in a small basement room that fell
into disorder: that's how the narrator of Smuggling Donkeys
sees himself. His wife has left him, gone off to someplace in
India on a spiritual quest; now and then she sends a postcard.
Impelled by some mixture of desolation and high spirits, Warren
has let Tessa Niles, a talented and beautiful former student,
talk him into buying a deconsecrated church to turn it into a
theatre, and he struggles to survive a winter of solitude in the
empty building, delivering a comic monologue to an audience of
one.
Gradually his life takes a new course. With Tessa's
assistance he begins to revive his career as an actor. His
life becomes its own kind of spiritual quest. Shakespeare and
Chekhov and Thornton Wilder provide words for him to speak. The
gods (in all their strange variety) hover. He ends his story on
the brink of astonishing possibilities. `In the last few years, David Helwig, who lives in Prince Edward Island, has been quietly producing some of the best work of his lengthy literary career -- poetry, fiction, memoir. He's never more entertaining than he is in the novella form, and his three recent ones -- The Stand-In (2002), Duet (2004) and now Smuggling Donkeys -- are as funny and absorbing as anything you'll find in Canadian literature today.'
`I've begun my reading for the Canadian Book Challenge with a book set in my current home province, Ontario. This is a short novella (87 p.) but it's full of good reading. It is the story of Warren Thouless, a retired teacher whose wife has just left him to go to India as a spiritual seeker. He's sold off his house and most of his possessions, and has been convinced by a former drama student to purchase a deconsecrated church, to turn it into a theatre. The book is the tale of Warren's year alone in a drafty old church, trying to understand why his wife left, and trying to find his way back to a voice of his own. Despite the surface appearance -- a book about an old guy dumped by his wife, flirting with a young & attractive former student, selling off his stuff to live a young man's unencumbered life? Doesn't sound very appealing, does it -- despite this, it is a great read. With David Helwig I felt I was in good hands; he knows what he is doing. He controls the language of his character without faltering, turning out a masterful monologue. His insights are sharp, characterization exact, and he is also very funny.'
-- indextriousblogspot.com
-- Dave Williamson, Prairie Books Now
Photo by Judy Gaudet
While he taught at Queen's University, he did some informal teaching in Collins Bay Penitentiary and he wrote A Book about Billie with a former inmate. In 1974, John Hirsch hired him as literary manager of CBC television drama, and he spent two years in this position, supervising the work of story editors and the department's relations with writers. From 1976 to 1980, he taught part time at Queen's while doing a great deal of freelance work, and in 1980, he gave up teaching and became a full-time freelance writer.
He has from the beginning written both fiction and poetry as well as a wide range of radio, television and journalism.
His avocation is vocal music. After abandoning this for some years, he returned to it in his forties and has sung with a number of choirs in Kingston, Montreal and Charlottetown. He has appeared as bass soloist in Handel's Messiah, Bach's St Matthew Passion, and Mozart's Requiem.
His autobiography, The Names of Things, was published in 2006. He currently lives in an old house in the village of Eldon in Prince Edward Island.
