Читать книгу Suspended Sentences - Mark McWatt - Страница 5

The idea of writing a book of short stories, purportedly by different authors and within a narrative frame, first occurred to me in 1989, when I remember discussing it briefly with David Dabydeen, who thought that it would prove too difficult to maintain distinctions between the styles/voices of the story-tellers. He was (is) probably right, but I wasn’t concerned too much with that, I just wanted to try it if/when I got the chance. A brief (and very immature) version of one of the stories existed since 1969, but the writing of the collection really began in the summer of 1999 in Toronto, when I wrote the first draft of ‘Uncle Umberto’s Slippers’. That story and two others, plus a draft of a fourth, were completed during the month of June, 2000, which I spent as a guest in the small Benedictine Monastery overlooking the Mazaruni river in Guyana. It rained incessantly and I am eternally grateful to Brother Paschal and the other monks for providing me with the time and atmosphere (and that wonderful room looking out on the river) perfect for writing. Over the next two years the plan of the collection was worked out in detail, including the names and personalities of the story-tellers (many modelled loosely on my own college classmates from the mid-sixties) but, although I tinkered a bit with the stories already written, I could not find enough time to write the rest of them until I took sabbatical leave in 2002-03. Two more stories were completed in Toronto before Christmas of 2002 and all the others were written (and the whole book revised) in a little staff flat at the University of Warwick, where I was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Caribbean Studies from January to July, 2003. I’m very grateful to the Centre and the University for the opportunity to work on several writing projects, prominently including this one.

I was told by a literary agent in London (to whom I had sent the typescript) that, although he personally enjoyed the book of stories, collections of short fiction were not at the time commercially marketable, and I would have to try a small publisher somewhere. I’m not so sure about ‘small’, but Peepal Tree Press – in the person of Jeremy Poynting – agreed to read the book and decided to publish it. For this I am very grateful.

I should thank Joanne Davis, whose delight with the stories she read and whose e-mailed demands for more helped me to keep working on them in the little flat at Warwick. My wife Amparo and my children Ana and Philip also read many of the stories as I finished them, and offered valuable – and sometimes mischievous – comments. I must mention too Margaret McWatt, Wayne McWatt, Ronnie Ramsay, Paschal Jordan, Al Creighton, Hazel Simmons-McDonald and, especially, Gloria Lyn, who all commented usefully on some or all of the stories. David Dabydeen was kind enough to read the completed typescript at a time when he was busy with the finishing touches to his own latest novel. To all these, and any whom I have omitted, I am extremely grateful for the time you took to read my work, for your kind encouragement and your valuable critical comments.

Mark McWatt