sewn paper
e-mail the
Author
Fiction, Performance Art
1995
24 pages
ISBN 0-88984-167-5
$16.95
Books in Canada
October 1995
...
Books in Canada: Earlier you mentioned Isabel Allende's magical stories.
The girl in "Muffins" with her lizard necklace -- she's a creature from fable,
isn't she, "fabulous" like so many of your characters?
Rooke: I believe there's something in the human spirit that hungers
for that kind of presence in one's life. And our own experiences from day to day
contain that element to a degree that would astonish us. And it's very useful,
we need that kind of magic, we need to believe in the spiritual element,
because without it how do you live with the atrocities, people all over
the globe doing hideous things to each other. It's the sense of revitalization
one feels every spring -- I mean the difference between these trees now and a month ago --
it was just stark, ugly, and bare. And now it's opulent, verdancy totally embracing
all over the place. I equate that magical presence of the extraordinary with what happens in
nature. Just the other day I was standing in this room, and I thought, when I turn around
I'm going to see a fish in that river -- I knew it -- and I did and there was a big pike -- about
this long -- swimming right out on the water. Had I thought longer about it, I might have
thought, what is it going to mean? [laughter] It's that connection that happens
with amazing, amazing frequency.
Books in Canada: The conjunction of the magical and the quotidian.
Rooke: Yes. And it seems to me that it happens a great deal more often to those people
who invite it -- who issue the invitation that life does hold those riches if one
will only welcome them.
Books in Canada: And that's what your fiction is about?
Rooke: Yes.
