The author
in an imaginary interview

Born in Canada, Jeff Bursey has lived in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador; London, England; and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where he now lives with his wife. He has worked in the hospitality industry, radio, government, and as a legal assistant, and does freelance editing and writing. These jobs have been carried out alongside his writing, which began in earnest after leaving London.

"There were just two stories written in London, very short stories, which were a relief after the thesis, and quite different from the plays. Otherwise, not much was done, except for a lot of watching and reading. Gaddis, Musil, Cendrars, Céline -- what great companions. William Gaddis said somewhere that the reading you do between 15 and 30 is the most important. Of course, he must have meant conscious choices, because what we read before 15 is important too. But those fellows, and others, significantly influenced certain ways of thinking about reading and writing. There were never any Canadian authors who did that, which explains to me why I see a lot of Canadian fiction as at odds with my own version.” As to his writing after returning to Newfoundland, Bursey says, “the economy was tanking, nations were changing, people were being dispossessed. How could you not react to those upheavals, on many levels? The question for me was how. I went, without really knowing it, and not all at once, for what could be called the social criticism perspective."

The move from England to Canada allowed stories to emerge, but Hollywood sparked the desire to write a novel. Upon seeing the movie "Batman," Bursey wondered why moviegoers, if they wanted a vengeful hero, didn’t turn to The Shadow or, more particularly, The Spider. On walks to and from work in 1989 and early 1990, a rough idea of a plot was laid out, followed by a period of reading. "Philip José Farmer’s mock biographies [Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life] opened up the possibilities to do what I did in Pulpseed for The Shadow and The Spider." Then the writing of this almost 200,000-word novel commenced. "It always seemed like there was never enough room to put in what I wanted. I didn’t want a small paperback, like the 1970s reprints of The Shadow from Pyramid, but a manuscript that could appear as one long novel, or two novels. If necessary. There're four parts to the book, and there's a natural division at the end of section two. Did I think about publishers and the marketplace when I was writing? No, because who can guess what they want? There was just so much fun doing it that I figured fans, who aren't as put off by long novels as critics are, fans who liked the Grant and Stockbridge and Hogan [names attached to The Shadow, The Spider and G-8 stories] books might have liked a longer book. And with three characters to deal with, you need space." Work on the novel was put aside occasionally for writing the bulk of the stories that would become An Impalpable Certain Rest. "It was pretty intense. Pulpseed took up a lot of time and energy, and the stories were a different type of writing altogether. I wanted to create a truly pulp atmosphere for the contemporary reader, one used to shocks and visual surprises, but also wanted a complex story that brought in the history -- if you can call it history -- of G-8, The Spider and The Shadow, set in some version of India and Tibet, as well as other concerns." The stories were "literary, to the side of the pulp, if you want, though I consider Pulpseed literary too. But in a very different way."

Both works were finished in 1993. Bursey worked unsuccessfully on selling the manuscripts while collecting odd bits of information for two anticipated novels. "I had in mind one book to write, called 'Brood,' but another idea came to me. Was forced out of me." Before 1993 ended, Verbatim: A Novel was begun. "Someone asked me what started it. Simple. Politics became offensive to me. The sheer waste of energy spent on argument, the partisanship, the idiocy of men and women on one side believing they always knew what to do, the fabrications politicians come up with to justify their existence and their actions, combined with the way their behaviour inside a legislature is shrouded in a kind of mystery -- sometimes the proceedings are like a Latin mass. Incomprehensible to most, with elaborate ceremonies, and rules that would never be condoned elsewhere. As the job went on [Bursey started work as a transcriber for Hansard in Newfoundland in 1990, and left it as one of two editors in the late summer of 2000], a peculiar kind of anger grew." In the finished text, it is clear there is present an instructive element. Readers are placed in the environment of a legislature and must learn the rules as they go. "At the time, and before, there was talk of Quebec separating, which bothered me, like it did everyone else. But I also had to question how the political system we have helped let this happen. It’s not the only reason, but it is a contributing factor." The work drew from daily experiences. "I was listening to politicians every day, in the Newfoundland House and on t.v., and reading proceedings from other legislatures which friends sent me, or which I got out of the library. I'd get a fair chunk of stuff from the real world, and then when I sat down to write there were these fresh crimes and moral lapses that had to be included. It was like driving and never having the gas tank come off Full."

One reader considers the book relentless, and without hope. "Impossible to have a different scenario than what's there. To do so would be to imagine a politician believing the system he or she worked in needed to be junked. I'm not saying there aren't such people, but once they think like that they’re no longer politicians. Since the book is set in a legislature and the bureaucracy, there's not going to be any change to the system coming from within. The legislature I created -- and a reader ought to know that it's fictional, because being trapped into the histories of real parties had to be avoided -- and the tone of the book came about because of the disgust with the system, with what politicians say and do in the run of a regular day, and for other reasons." From the beginning there were two main questions: how would the material be shaped, and how far did he want to go in mimicking a legislature. "I had to be thoroughgoing, and represent a House as it exists, and show what it can do. There are those who know these things, and to fail there would dilute the work. I hadn't heard of any other novel that had been written like this, with debates and letters only, and the debates presented in Hansard style, with dual columns. I used a variety of fonts to help set characters apart. That and language use and punctuation. It's another long book, about 215,000 words, but there was a lot to say, and I felt a few technical devices would help a reader. At that length, and in dealing with politics, the book sure had to be entertaining, which I think it is. Those who’ve read it have laughed out loud. When I finished it in January of 1995 it was as if a fever had passed. For a time I didn't feel any anger, just pleasurable fatigue. As if I’d done my best to expose a system in the only way it could have been done in a novel."

The style struck some publishers as too close to the real thing, and the content made others feel it could not be marketed. Its length was intimidating, and that the author was unknown did not help. "Nothing I could do about the latter, short of committing a sensational crime. As for marketing, anything can be marketed if you’re inventive enough. As a copy writer [in radio, from late 1989 to mid-1990] I had to sell nails and insurance and cars and concepts from 9 to 6 every day. Publishers made a business decision about expenses. That was all."

In the wake of the rejection of this "very Canadian book, which was sent only to Canadian publishers, except for one experimental place in the U.S.," the delayed idea behind 'Brood' was brought back. "Ken Harvey's Brood had come out, so that title was no good, and in any case the concerns I had, and the structure, had evolved past the origins." But the next novel was begun tentatively. "I wrote 'Sweat,' the first chapter, three or four, with the wording changing at each draft. Certain themes and a style had to be established right away, but I could only get the first few pages down, then a few more. I took most of 1995 off, because I was tired after Verbatim, and didn't begin writing 'Sweat' until the spring of 1996, though I was making notes for the novel the whole time, and had been before even starting Verbatim. But actual writing stopped for a while." Bursey attempted something else. "It wasn't avoidance. There were three reasons for taking a break. One, being tired. Two, I always like a break between projects, to let the style I use in one book fade from my mind so I don't repeat it in the next. Three, I'd rented 'The Shadow' movie one night -- I’d seen it when it came out in 1994 -- and after going to bed started thinking how a Shadow book, written for today, would have to go. I got out of bed and went to the dining room where I scribbled the first 10 pages -- all the novels are written in longhand -- of a story. When I had the chance I typed them up, expanding as I went, and then started adding material. But I didn't get beyond the exposition. Some day I might go back and try. For now, it's stalled, though I did tinker with it recently. The Shadow-Spider Contemporary Novel is what I call it, because so far no satisfying plot line has come to me.”

Perhaps as a result of this warm-up exercise, in the fall of 1996 Bursey could concentrate more fruitfully on what had been called 'Brood' and would be titled Mirrors on which dust has fallen. "It has more of a typical novel look to it, with chapters and a narrator, a setting -- same setting, in a way, as Verbatim -- with people going through the usual things that happen in life. The action covers eight months, and it's about 118,000 words, so it's a normal size. Since I'd dealt with politics, religion and sex were next." The book was completed in the spring of 1998 and revised by August, with a refinement occurring in 2002. "With this book, we're talking eight months. How many of your friends change what they're like in that time? We do things slowly, so the pace of the narrative reflects that. It's not static, but there aren't any major events, not until about midway, when what happens between two characters signals a shift. Every small thing that certain characters have done, or have had done to them, accumulates a significant mass and momentum, propelling the rest of the book. It doesn't work like a police procedural from then on, but some people -- not all -- shift, for the better and for the worse." Balancing the relative lack of action are various subplots. In this picaresque novel, the state of Catholicism, the pursuits of friendship, love and money, arguments over art, and depictions of physical and mental conditions are explored through a prose which is deliberately allusive. "Some folks will hunt those things down. I did the same thing in Pulpseed and Verbatim. If people don't get them, that's okay, it's still a fun book with lots to offer." The long sentences, commenting narrator and peculiar conceits -- "it is a social satire, after all, a dark one maybe, but with hope in it" -- mark a change from Verbatim’s debates, letters and unseen narrator. "Definitely, the style is one that might be called more reader-friendly, but that's okay. A structure has to fit the material, and to talk about this character's worries over cancer and another's possible desire for another person of the same gender, or to discuss a character’s loss of faith, required, for me, a narrator. But al'’s not what it might look like at first. There are surprises in the book which, as I said, a patient reader will find. Maybe not right away, but in time."

Two chapters from Mirrors won prizes in different years, including the opening chapter, "Sweat," which begins with a description of Bowmount (a city introduced in Verbatim) before shifting into a stockroom, the workplace of one of the novel's main characters. Through the medium of a radio, readers are moved from there into an office of a Bowmount radio station, and eventually introduced to other main characters and their friends or acquaintances, to their families, and also to the places where these people relax.

Asked why he rarely places his fiction in settings one can point to on a map, or in a chain retail outlet or restaurant, Bursey's response is this. "Regionalism. Libel laws. Wanting to create a community, a place, or series of places, where anything can happen. Regional writers speak as many truths as people who aren't called regional writers, but in Canada there's a way of saying, to anyone, of any profession, 'Oh, you're from the Atlantic provinces,' that indicates the person speaking is pigeonholing you. For writers, that often means you're expected to write in a certain way, think in a certain way, act in a certain way. Same with those from out west, or from B.C., or Ontario, or Quebec, or from the north. So why not avoid that? If your stories are okay it doesn't matter if they take place in Gormenghast Castle or Ottawa. The freedom to invent places -- I invented a city in India for Pulpseed, and you might say I invented an India as well -- is something I find to my liking. Though I can't say I know all the reasons why, or at least not yet. It's evident I'm not a documentarian, so I don't feel the need to present a real place down to the mortar and stones. For instance, a future novel is set in a very specific city, but I'll change it as I wish, just because it suits my purposes."

There is little amplification about present or future works. "To talk about the current novel would maybe ruin it, for me, for any readers. It's enough to say that the current book was begun after I got adjusted to being in Charlottetown, and to being without employment except for what came about through freelance work. This one is slow to write due to certain technical matters, and because my time and energy have been taken up by jobs and other things. But then, there were four books in seven years, so I’m allowed some time before the next one has to come out. By my calendar, I mean. It's going to be short, shorter than Mirrors. There’s always an interest in structure, and in keeping things fresh for my own sake. Anyone reading the previous books would see their differences in presentation. Same will go for this, and if it’s pulled off then I’ll be happy. Usually I think a reader will be as well. After this one, there’s the other I mentioned, in a specific city. But maybe something else could come between.”