E. Annie Proulx
"I am the oldest of five girls. I was born in
Connecticut in 1935, where my mother''s English
ancestors -- farmers, mill workers, inventors, artists --
have lived for 350 years. My father''s Franco-Canadian
grandparents came to New England in the 1860s to
work in the woolen mills. My father was in the textile
business and we moved frequently when I was a child
as he worked his way up the executive ladder. I suspect
my intense and single-minded work habits stem from
his example. My mother is a painter and amateur
naturalist, and from her I learned to see and appreciate
the natural world, to develop an eye for detail, and to
tell a story. There is a strong tradition of oral
storytelling in my mother''s family and, as a child, I
heard thousands of tales and adventures made out of
nothing more substantial than the sight of a man
digging clams, an ant moving a straw, an empty shoe.
"I''ve lived in Vermont for more than three decades,
studies history at the University of Vermont and
Concordia University in Montreal. In hindsight, I
recognize that learning to examine the lives of
individuals against the longue duree of events was
invaluable training for novel-writing.
"There were few teaching jobs in history in the
seventies, and I shifted from academic study to
freelance journalism and for the next 15 years wrote
articles on weather, apples, canoeing, mountain lions,
mice, cuisine, libraries, African beadwork, cider, and
lettuces for dozens of magazines. Whenever I could
squeeze in the time I wrote short stories.
"In 1988, Scribners published a collection of these
stories, Heart Songs and Other Stories. My editor
encouraged me to write a novel, and this first effort
was Postcards. Around the time Heart Songs was
published I made my first trip to Newfoundland.
Rarely have I been so strongly moved by geography as
I was during that first journey up the Great Northern
Peninsula. The harsh climate, the grim history, the
hard lives and the generous, warm characters of the
outport fisherman and their families interested me
deeply. Yet I could also see contemporary civilization
rushing in on the island after its centuries of isolation
and the idea for The Shipping News began to form.
Over the next few years I made nine trips of
Newfoundland, watching, observing, taking notes,
listening. I am keenly interested in situations of
change, both personal and social, and in this book I
wanted to show characters teetering along the
highwires of their lives yet managing to keep their
balance, lives placed against a background of
incomprehensible and massive social change.
"The manuscript was completed several months
before the Canadian government, alarmed at the
decline of the northern cod stock, imposed a fishing
moratorium in Newfoundland. Two years later the
cod have not recovered, but are at the point of
near-extinction. With their disappearance the
Newfoundland fishing economy has collapsed. It is
now generally observed on the island that the old
outport fishing life that sustained Newfoundlanders
for centuries is finished."
Reading Group Discussion Points
Other
Books With Reading Group Guides