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He spent 4 years
working on a novel entitled The Loving of Michael
Goggins, a modern version of A Midsummer Night's
Dream. His main characters were a Titania-like
young woman, a pudgy Bottom-like man, and an homme fatal
disc jockey. It was a story of ill-fated love, despair,
romantic disenchantment and all those youthful, fun
emotions. He finished the novel in 1980 and it was rejected
in 18 days, a Canadian indoor record.
That
same year he finished his first short story and sent
it to Saturday Night. They phoned him one evening
when he was in his kitchen standing beneath a high beam.
He had often tried to jump high enough to touch this
beam, but he could never quite reach it. The editor
told him that Saturday Night would like to
"buy" his story. He had never heard that sentence
uttered before. The editor asked him if $2,000 would
be all right, and he told the man yes, that would be
all right. Carpenter gave this reply in a tone suggesting
that this sort of thing happened with boring regularity.
When the phonecall ended, he leapt up into the air and
slapped he beam above him and returned, very slowly,
to earth.
His
novel Niceman Cometh was his 10th book, a story
about a Titania-like single mom, a pudgy Bottom-like
dreamer, and a flesh-foolish disc jockey in the Saskatoon
of the 1990s. He launched a new book of fiction in the
fall of 2009, a collection of novellas entitled Welcome
to Canada.
Carpenter is currently at work on
Volume One of The Literary History of Saskatchewan.
He
also just finished working on a nonfiction book, A
Hunter's Confession, about the rise and fall of
hunting as a pastime in North America.
Carpenter’s
writing credo is as follows (and it may not apply to
poets): Most writers must learn to make a pact with
dullness. Not boredom, or lack of imagination or passion,
but dullness of routine. Keep your daily appointment
with the computer screen and keep your ass on the chair
until you’ve reached your daily quota. However
rich your inner life may be, seek also the dullard within.
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