How I ended up writing a political fable … and what I discovered when I did so
July 23rd, 2024
by Herschel Hardin
Jack in Pemberland (FriesenPress $19.25) is the title of my book, a tale of the discovery of a hidden city in the Cayoosh Range in British Columbia—a comic fable with a political edge. How did it happen, though, that a writer of largely non-fiction like myself should end up working in an altogether different genre—”magical realism” let’s call it—and that it worked out well? Therein lies a tale in itself.
It all goes back to my deciding to do some lateral thinking.
I was tackling, as a freelance journalist, a serious political issue: immigration, or more specifically, Canada’s artificially inflated level of immigration (and of foreign students and other international migration to the country) and its impact on housing costs. The number of outsiders coming into BC and especially Vancouver was making housing for many unaffordable and the prospect of buying a house or a condo impossible. This unaffordability was simultaneously entrenching an already serious inequality in society, enlarging the gap between those with property and others. The pressure of migration numbers was also steamrolling community planning. There were other destructive consequences as well.
A taboo, however, impeded any open discussion of the issue. I set out to break the taboo. I ended up writing 16,000 words, which I posted on my website. (If you disagree with my take on the matter, please read my essay first, “Time to start thinking with your bloody heads,” April 15, 2023.)
The trouble with a 16,000-word essay is that few people will have the patience to read it all. In my defense, I had a lot of ground to cover and wanted to get my analysis on the record. I also managed to place an excerpt, just on housing in Vancouver, in an online magazine, Inroads. Moreover, I wasn’t the only one tackling the matter. I knew of others who were doing articles on pieces of the problem—articles of much more manageable length than my disquisition and with a considerably greater readership, including 600 to 700-word opinion pieces in The Globe and Mail.
A regular columnist in the Vancouver Sun, Douglas Todd, meanwhile, had taken on the issue with some first-class work.
Nothing much in the political world changed, however, neither at the federal or provincial level. All our political parties, similarly, shied away. The taboo against discussing the inflated level of immigration to Canada still ruled for the most part in the country, despite its severe consequences and the growing critical analysis.
In my exploring of the issue, something else came to concern me even more, going well beyond Canada: the world just had too many people. Those population pressures would play havoc with us all, wherever in the world we lived. I added a separate section on this in my essay. The catapulting population would also defeat our best efforts to adequately limit climate change. Few commentators in the major media were talking about that one.
So, what could I possibly do? I sat back and cogitated. “It’s time for some lateral thinking,” I finally said to myself with bravado. The methodology for lateral thinking is, of course, brainstorming, which I proceeded to do in my own mind. I ended up deciding to write a fable.
Don’t ask me how that came about. It seemed the “storm” in my brain generated the idea all on its own. Isn’t that how brainstorming works? The more I thought about it, though, the more I knew I was on the right track. A story, a fable, a tale, a kaleidoscope of colourful characters, a plot, an adventure, a hero or heroine, the outrageous that nevertheless was more real than reality—magical realism in short—would reach people in a way that analysis of an issue and all its arguments couldn’t.
My fable would capture the reader’s imagination in that way—touch their soul or their funny-bone, or both—and have them look at the world in a new way. “I’ll do it!” I declared to myself.
I wasn’t altogether unarmed. Although largely a non-fiction author in the past, I was also a playwright, and plays have story lines, characters, and drama, or comedy as the case might be. I also had a draft novel of 175,000 words in my computer, waiting to be finished. My history of Vancity, the credit union (Working Dollars: The VanCity Story) was also useful experience. It was based largely on capturing the character and aspirations of the people involved; I often thought it read like a novel.
I had, however, never written an actual fable and wasn’t sure how to go about it. I proceeded logically, in the simplest way imaginable. I went to my local library and borrowed The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz for inspiration. The Wizard of Oz didn’t speak to me, but Alice in Wonderland, where the lead character ends up in a totally strange place and goes about meeting its people, fitted.
Jack in Pemberland was born. As you’ll see, structurally it resembles Alice: Jack finds himself in a hidden city, Pemberland, in the Cayoosh Range, and, through meeting a covey of colourful characters, discovers what makes the city tick. The fable overall, however, is quite different from Alice—quite unique. Also, unlike Alice, it is quite political. Later I thought of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but Jack, being a rollicking comedy, is poles away from Animal Farm, too.
And here was the greatest surprise. I set out to make the book entertaining in order to get across its political message. If it wasn’t entertaining, who would read it? And how would the underlying message get past readers’ fixed minds and prejudices?
What I didn’t expect, in the reader response, was just how much of a fun read it would be and how the tale and its characters would carry beyond the message. Almost as a by-product, I had done something memorable in literary terms, given the genre. Jack and his friends, the characters I had created, existed in their own right, so real I could put my arm around their shoulders. Jack in Pemberland had taken on a life of its own.
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For a brief description of Jack in Pemberland, please see https://www.herschelhardin.ca/jack.htm.
To contact Herschel Hardin: herschel@herschelhardin.ca.
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