The Current - Why Michael Crummey is interested in places on the edge

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Michael Crummey has won the $154,000 Dublin Literary Award for his book The Adversary, which explores familiar themes around life at the ocean's edge. Matt Galloway spoke with the author at the Woody Point Writers Festival in Newfoundland in Sept. 2023, to discuss isolation, vulgarity and the responsibility that comes with telling the stories of home.

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This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. It is a massive honor for one of Canada's most beloved writers. As we mentioned on the program yesterday, just as the news was freshly out, Newfoundland's Michael Crumby has won the Dublin Literary Award. He is the third Canadian to win the 100,000 Euro prize over the course of its 30 year history. The others being Rémy Hage and Alastair MacLeod.

Michael Crumby won for his latest novel, The Adversary, a book the prize jury says, compellingly and convincingly immerses its readers in a world previously lost to fiction and almost lost to memory. A Newfoundland outport from the early years of the colony connected to the world outside only by the occasional supply ship. In 2023 I had a chance to sit down with Michael Crumby to talk about that novel. We were in Woody Point. The Writers at Woody Point Festival is unfolding in that small town in Newfoundland and Labrador. And we sat on the deck of the Grossmourne Inn facing this sweeping, unbelievable view of the town, the mountains and the water of Bon Bay. Here's

that conversation. So, as a writer from this province, what does it mean to read a book like this and talk about a book like this here? I just came from a little meet and greet. And I was meeting people who have been reading my books for 20, 25 years, you know. And I know writers often overstate this, but it is true that most of the time we're just sitting alone in a room. And it's easy to feel like the work doesn't have a home outside of that, your little space. And the people,

most of the people that I'm meeting are people from this place and they talk about being grateful to see it. It makes the place they're from feel more real somehow. Despite the fact that they're from that place. Yeah. My friend Stan Dragglin, who we lost recently, great writer and literary critic, and he talks about how by being translated into works of art, into films and into songs and into stories, places become more real to the people from those places. And I totally recognize that. I mean, when I was growing up, there were no writers that I knew from Newfoundland or had heard of from Newfoundland. The real world in one way, what felt real,

were places where NHL hockey games were played, right? Because that was on television and somehow that felt more real. And I think the kind of explosion in the arts in Newfoundland in the last 25 years, 30 years, part of what it's done for people here and has done for me is to make me feel this place is as real and as rich and as nourishing as any place in the world. Tell me about the place that this novel is set in, Machbeger. Well, Machbeger is, after having said that, is completely made up. But there is, I mean, there is a place, right? Like there is...

No, no. There is a place in Newfoundland called Machbeger, which is part of a town called Bonavesta. And a lot of the kind of background stories and anecdotes and just hints of character that I used in The Innocence, which is the novel before this one, I got from a book about Bonavista by a local guy named Bruce Wiffin. It was just a sort of a community history. This is the story of Bonavista. And within that, talked about different tiny communities around Bonavista that became Bonavista eventually and one of them was Mock Bebeger. And I just loved the name. So I stole it.

As one does. And, but of course, the Machbeger in this book has no connection to that place, particularly. Describe the Machbeger in the book. Well, the Machbeger in the book is, for those people who have read The Innocents, it's the kind of big town near the cove that the brother and sister in The Innocents. It's never seen, but it's talked about. By big town, I mean like a tiny fishing village where the merchants who control the shore have set up their premises. This is the late 19th century and everybody in the town is involved in and completely dependent on the fishery.

Almost all of them are Europeans who've come over from England or Ireland or some other part of the continent and have set up in Newfoundland either by choice or bad luck. In good years, they get by and in bad years, things are really bad. Tell me more about that and what life would have been like. Well, the fishery at that time was just a really, and for most of its history, was a pretty brutal undertaking. And very, it was fraught and unpredictable. And the way that the fishery was set up at the time was what they called the truck system. Every shore would have its merchants and they would give, in the spring of the year, on credit, they would give the materials that a fisherman needed or a crew needed to fish for the season. And then at the end of the season, the fishing crews would have to give what they caught

back to the merchant as payment for what they got on credit. And you hope the numbers work out. And you hope the numbers work out. But of course, the numbers were all controlled by the merchant. So most people live their lives in debt. It bred a particular kind of people, I think, because the fishing was incredibly hard physical work and particularly dangerous because you were in small open boats on the North Atlantic. And for those people, I think there was almost,

there was very little in their lives that they had control over. They were always at the mercy of one thing or another. The weather, the sea, whether or not the fish showed up, how long the growing season was, which was always short at the best of times. And of course, they were completely dependent on the price of fish, which was completely dependent on what was happening in politics in Europe or in

South America. Can you imagine living like in that community like that? No, no, I can't. And you know, people often ask that question, if you could live in any other era, what era would it be? And I always say, no time before flush toilets. And most of the people, including my father, you know, who grew up in that world, they

were not nostalgic about it. You know, my dad would talk nostalgically about the people, but the circumstances of the life, like what you had to do day to day just to have water to drink and food to eat, that's something that I would never want to have to deal with myself. But I think the reason that I write about the past so frequently is because I'm fascinated

by those conditions that people were forced to live in. And the characters who, I mean Abe Strapp, the guy who's at the center of this book, who's, I don't know, how would you describe him? Well, Abe is one of the few merchants on the shore born into a merchant family and I would say I don't know if I can say this on the CBC but he's an asshole and a complete reprobate. Sadistic awful human being. Yeah I would say a particularly kind of sociopathic narcissist and I would say his sister is a different kind of, so there's the brother and sister in the, there's a brother and sister in the innocence and this book is kind of, as I said, a companion and kind

of a reflection, like it's the flip side of the innocence. So of course there's a brother and sister in this book, but instead of a story about a brother and sister who love each other and basically survive because they want the other person to survive. And it was kind of a warped Adam and Eve story. This book... But incredible. But anyway, continue. This book is more of a Cain and Abel story. And it's a brother and sister who despise each other and actively wish each other ill. But they are exactly the same in the sense

that all of their relationships are transactional. And once they've gotten all they can get from somebody, they are quite happy in the prevalence of today to throw them under the bus. And I think, again, this is set a couple of hundred years ago, but what I ended up doing was writing a book that was a direct response to what I saw in the world that I was living in the last eight, ten years. What do you mean?

Well, I think of, I hesitate to talk about this because there isn't a direct parallel, I don't think. But I do feel like we've been watching the world slide into authoritarianism and fascism in the United States, definitely, but before that and since in places like Hungary and in Brazil and in the Philippines there's been a real rise of so called strongmen of autocrats and Also, I mean if you look at something like the the climate crisis that we are so clearly in now like

seriously, seriously, I mean that is fueled by a fossil fuel industry where the leaders of those industries have known from their own research since the 50s or 60s What it would mean to carry on with business as usual so I think in some ways I was writing out my sense of what it would be like for a community of people to have to make their lives and make their way in the world with those kinds of people at the top. You know, both the Widow and Abe to me are kind of like black holes and everybody else is caught in an orbit around them. And as the book progresses, that

orbit gets tighter and tighter. And eventually, it seems to me, everybody is sucked into that. You know, there are there are enablers like like the beetle is a real enabler for Abe Strapp. Of course, the beetle is this character from The Innocence who's kind of the headman of Abe Strapp's operation, and he despises Abe. Adam But he's a willing accomplice. Dr. R. But he's a willing accomplice because his position depends on Abe and because, in his mind, because of his religious beliefs, he looks at the widow as a greater evil, right? For a woman to be in that position to him is just

complete anathema. So he starts out thinking, I can control this guy, you know? And by doing that, makes it more and more possible for Abe to corrupt everybody else around him. And you see that happening now? Yeah. I mean, I hate to bring him up, but I mean, if you look at Trump, when Trump was first elected, the notion most people were offering was he'll have enough adults around him to keep him on the straight and narrow. And of course, every adult in the room was completely,

they were either completely corrupted by him and ended up enthusiastically cheerleading for him or else they quit and left. That's a kind of dynamic that I was interested in having play out in this book. A VP at HBO said no one would ever watch Yellowstone. Stephen King was rejected by 30 publishers, Charles Schultz was told he'd never make a living scribbling, and Missy Elliott was dropped by her label. The stories of famous names, their lesser-known rejections, and the insights those rejections provide.

We regret to inform you the Rejection Podcast. Listen to season 6 wherever you get your podcasts. Let me ask you about where you set books like this. One thing you did say is that Newfoundland culture is outport culture. Mm-hmm. And that you can't understand this place without understanding outport culture and that you can't understand this place without understanding outport culture. We've been tooling around, going to small communities at the edge of the sea that are facing all sorts of existential threats, climate change being forced back, huge storms that have pushed people's homes into the

sea and they're trying to figure out whether they can stay in those communities. What is it about the places that are right at the edge that interests you? I mean, I think part of the reason, it's kind of a chicken and egg thing. I'm interested in those places on the edge because that's where I'm from and that's where my parents are from. And I'm trying to figure in some ways by writing about those places, I'm trying to figure out, well, how did I become who I am? But I also feel like that

people who live in places at the margins and on the edge, as people in Newfoundland outports have since Europeans were settled here, those people are forced to be different than people who live in more comfortable circumstances. What do you mean? People are forced to rely on one another. It's impossible to live with the lie that people are independent, or that you can pull yourself up by your own brood straps in every single circumstance, or that people who are going through hard times have brought it upon themselves. Because in those communities in this place, everybody goes through hard times at some point. Everybody requires the assistance of other people.

So there's a kind of generosity that people have no choice but to exhibit. And it has become ingrained in a way, you know? And that's the cliché of Newfoundlanders, that they're the friendliest, most open, most generous people. It's true. And it's true because they could not have survived here if they were any different. They had to be that way. But the other side of that, I think, is that there's also a kind of fatalism that spread into people in those circumstances,

because there was so much that they couldn't control. There was very little in the way of medical help, medical care, the weather was complete, the fish were completely outside people's control and you just had to take whatever came your way. I mean that's in the books called the adversary in some ways like the place is the adversary right it's the weather it's the fact that summer is awful it's not the great wonderful season and you really are at the mercy of what happens to roll in on the sea. Yeah and it's it's one it's not the great, wonderful season, and you really are at the mercy of what happens to roll in on the sea. Yeah, and it's an odd thing about Newfoundlanders, like there's that old joke about Newfoundlanders

that they're the only people who will be unhappy in heaven because they'll be wanting to go back to the island. And that love that people have for this place, which is very real, I've always thought is very unrequited. Like, it's not really returned by the place, you know? When you look at, I mean, you can't grow vegetables here. The weather, like this spring we just went through, was just awful.

And as I keep having to remind myself, it's often like that. I guess that's why this place has always fascinated me. You know, it's just so particular. And it's true, every part of the island is so particular, you know, so there are some general traits I think that you'll find in every Newfoundland community. But if you spend time in any Newfoundland community, in any part of the island, you'll realize each one is

its own animal, its own creature. And it's because their relationship to where they live depends on how far away the fishing grounds are, how much arable land there is in their particular part, whether there's a merchant in the community or if the merchant lives in another part of the island. All of those things play into how people see themselves in the world that they live in. What happens when that's threatened? People are being forced away from it. You can't live right at the edge of the sea and the government's actually telling people that they need to move. Yeah. What do you lose if people if people if you can't make a life there?

I worry that some of the losses are going to be the things that are most unique about the place. That we are proud of stuff, which is that sense of community and that willingness to put yourself on the line for other people. But maybe that's just because I'm a pessimist at heart. I don't know. How does writing about the past, I mean, how does that shape how you think about this place now? Well, to be honest, I feel like when I'm writing about the past,

I'm writing about this place now. Like, what I'm trying to do is find the roots of the things that I recognize from my own life, from my parents and in my kids. So I don't feel like I'm writing about the past, you know. I feel like the past is just a place to set a story about my own sense of what Newfoundland is. And with this book, with The Adversary and with The Innocents as well, I think the books before that

were particularly about Newfoundland and I wanted to say something about Newfoundland. And you don't see that in these books? I feel like Newfoundland is the place where these books happen and I'm trying to be as true to the place as I can. But what I'm interested in, in The Innocence, I was interested in childhood in. In the innocence I was interested in childhood and in the ways that what you know or don't know as a child, how you know, like my own childhood was I think like everybody's completely confusing and bewildering and in some ways terrifying. Awkward and humiliating. All of those things. So I was writing a story about two children who were going through all of those things. So I was writing a story about two children who were going

through all of those things with no resources whatsoever. And this book again, I'm writing about the world that I feel like I'm living through. And the past is just a convenient place to set that, you know, but the issues that I'm interested in addressing are exactly the same. So I hope that I'm presenting the world there authentically. But what I'm after is something that feels to me at least much more contemporary and much more present. So much of this place is about the language and how people express themselves. And I mean, it comes through in your books, but in this book, it's unbelievable.

What is a dictionary of vulgar tongue? Well, the dictionary of the vulgar tongue was a dictionary compiled by a guy named Francis Gross, and I think it's 1798 or 1780 something. And it was updated in 1811. The vulgarity had had progressed to a certain point. Well at the time vulgar just meant common so it was the speech of the common people and it's actually a dictionary that was compiled in Britain. So when I was writing The Innocents I realized most of the characters here are not Newfoundlanders.

They're Europeans who are working in Newfoundland. So I went looking for some sense of how people spoke at the time in Britain and I found this dictionary of the vulgar tongue, which was just a riot from start to finish. It's mostly the language of thieves, pickpockets, prostitutes, semen, all of the what would have been called the lower classes. And just the rawness of it, but also the creativity of the language was so great that I just decided I was going to try to get as much of that as I could into The Innocents. And I've gotten even more, I think,

into the Adversary because there's so many more characters speaking. Pete Can you give us an example of that? David Yeah. I mean, I was trying to go through and just, for example, there was, there's a group of prostitutes who come to Machbeger and set up one term for prostitutes at the time were Mary Ars Christians, which sounds like a Newfoundland term. And Mary begot is a word for a bastard or for a child born out of wedlock in Newfoundland. And I'm sure that there's a connection there between those two. But then all of the words for our genitalia, for example. So the man Thomas was also known as a jewel for ladies or a

tickle tail or a whore pipe. And we should have put a parental guide. Yes. Yeah. This section of the conversation will continue. But the nice thing about them, of course, is that you're not saying what you're saying, but you're saying could mean almost anything. So a woman's commodity was a crinkham crankham or a man trap. Or my favorite was the venerable monosyllable.

or a man trap, or my favorite was the venerable monosyllable. And there's all kinds of great insults, like a lazy person or a person you really dislike was a shit-a-bed, a stupid person was a cork-brained calf lolly. And so as I was writing through the book, and I'd read through the dictionary multiple times, I would find myself in a circumstance where I thought, this is a point where Abe or one of the prostitutes would say something, and I would go back to my notes to see if I could find the exact right phrase for that moment. And it's a real trick because it can feel completely forced and made up. It can feel like there's a guy sitting in a chair going through a dictionary. So I was trying to find circumstances and when those things, where those things felt completely natural and where it added to the flavor and to the movement of the of the prose as well.

It doesn't feel forced. It doesn't feel like somebody's sitting there with a dictionary. It feels like you are immersed in another world. Just finally, you talked earlier about being at this festival and I mean we should say like we're sitting outside in the sunshine in this beautiful setting. And gross mourn is right over your shoulder. And it's amazing. You were at the festival and you met readers who said that it's as though you know you were writing about the place that they were from and that it felt more real in that writing. When you hear that, I mean, as a writer, is that the best kind of praise that you can get?

I think so. I really do. I mean, I love hearing from people who are not from here, who also love the books. Because when I started writing, I did not know if this would translate at all. And that's a real thrill, like the books have been translated in odd places, like all the novels have been published in Poland, for example. And I did a little tour over there and it was so great to like meet people from Warsaw or wherever and to have them say, I love this book. But to have people from here say that it feels like I'm writing out of their lives. After my book Allure came out, my favorite comments were from people who said, I felt like I was listening to my grandparents talk.

You just wonder whether there is an extra responsibility in some ways to those people. No disrespect to the readers in Poland who love your book. But whether those people who see their family, whether you as a writer from here feel a greater responsibility to that. I think so. I mean, one of my first books was a little book of poetry and prose pieces called Hard Light,

which was mostly about my dad's life and me stealing his best stories. But I always talked about that as a love letter to my father and to the world that he came from. And to a certain extent, I think that's been true of everything I've written, that it's been a love letter to, I mean, nobody I think could accuse me of glossing over the negative side of things. But it is an attempt to get this place down on paper and to give it back to people who experience the world that way through reading books, which is kind of was how I grew up as well, you know, like learning the world by

reading. I'm a huge fan and it's just great to talk to you, but it's great to talk to you here. Yeah. Thank you very much. This has been a real pleasure. Thanks, Matt. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.