 What
could Stalin's dentist, a Parisian maitre d' watching
the first demo of the Lumi�re brothers' cin�matographe
and a Canadian trucker delivering contraband toilets to
the US possibly have in common? All are residents of the
expansive mindscape of a physician and fiction writer
named Liam Durcan.
For the past four years, Dr Durcan
has been publishing short stories with styles and subjects
so diverse that readers might well suspect that LIAM
DURCAN is an acronym for a secret global literary network.
The result is a collection published last year under
the title A Short Journey by Car.
EMERALD
GENES
The writing might just be in the blood. Dr Durcan's
family hails from a nation of born storytellers —
Ireland. His parents moved to Winnipeg, where he was
born in 1965, but the Irish love for a ripping yarn
stayed with him, and even inspired one of the stories
in A Short Journey, "Nolan, an Exegesis." It
tells the tale of an Irish boy born with an image of
Christ on his tongue, and is told through the 'eyewitness'
accounts of various doctors, priests, journalists and
friends. One describes the freak show set-up the boy's
father contrives to have people take a peek at the apparition:
[A sign] explained it all as something
mysterious and awesome, something the church was investigating,
and implied that special healing powers had been attributed
to just the sight of the tongue. It also asked the pilgrims
to give what they could into a black satchel.
The story stemmed in part from
Dr Durcan's experiences in the Irish town of Rush, where
he lived with his family between the ages of 10 and
12. "I felt very alien there," he recalls. "I went from
being the Irish boy in Winnipeg, to being an 'American'
in Ireland. And I was struck in particular by the religiosity
of people. I thought it would be interesting to write
about someone who became a kind of holy figure in spite
of not being religious himself."
Medicine was a bit more of a stretch.
But when he entered med school at the University of
Manitoba, he made the decision to put his writing aside
completely. While he had no doubts about his career
choice, he found the textbook-focus of the first years
"a tiny bit disappointing" and began to feel, in spite
of the excellent technical training he was getting,
that he "really wasn't educated about very much."
But in residency, he blossomed.
Working with patients — and particularly neurology
patients — proved deeply fulfilling. "Neurology
is incredibly diverse," he says. "Some of my colleagues
deal with just skeletal muscle, others with just problems
of consciousness. In one day, I'll see people with numb
hands and people who can't recognize faces. It broadens
you."
It wasn't until 2000 that he shifted
back into literary gear. Having made the move to Montreal,
he enrolled in a weekly Quebec Federation of Writers
workshop, which he describes as "the ideal workshop
experience," and began writing diligently in his spare
time. His stories were quickly snapped up by magazines
including Fiddlehead, Zoetrope, The Antigonish Review
and Maisonneuve. The Globe and Mail picked
Short Journey as one of the 100 best books of
2004.
Dr Durcan's writing is concise
and rich with detail at the same time — qualities
that seem to stem as much from his scientist's attention
to detail as the more practical matter of time —
or rather a lack thereof. The full-time neurologist,
member of the McGill University resident training committee
and husband and father of two, simply hasn't got much
time to spare. He rises each morning at five to catch
an hour of quiet time before his wife, Florence, a veterinarian,
his four-year-old son, Niall and his 21-month-old daughter,
Julia, have stirred. This schedule doesn't bother the
MD in the least. "You get time when you get time," he
says matter-of-factly. "I've thought about working two
days a week so that I could write more, but I don't
know that I'd necessarily be more productive."
MODERN
CATHOLIC TASTES
His writing takes classic metaphorical description and
juxtaposes it with an almost journalistic reporting
style. Take this passage from the title story of A
Short Journey by Car, narrated by a kidnapped dentist:
"Anya. Her smile, modest alluring as it is, is made
more beautiful by the simple fact that I cannot remember
it as ever needing to show me a single tooth."
The subject matter comes from a
combination of wide reading and lifelong preoccupations.
The origin of this story of a dentist in 1930s Moscow
who is tapped to look after the teeth of 'Comrade Leader'
Stalin, is a classic example of the Durcan method. "I
always wanted to write a story about [Stalin-era composer
Dmitri] Shostakovich, but I didn't know anything about
music and felt I couldn't make it convincing," he recounts.
"Then I was in the library one day and came across a
peculiar article — a Foucauldian analysis of power
relationships between dentists and their patients, and
this idea came to me." The power struggle comes through
loud and clear.
LITERARY
DOC CLUB
Among the doctor's literary loves and influences, the
closest to his heart is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov.
"It's probably a bit clich�, since he was a doctor,
too," Dr Durcan says, "but he's the writer I find most
inspiring. I'm particularly impressed by his compassion
toward his characters, his fairness toward them."
Does being a physician give a writer
special powers of empathy or insight? "I would hesitate
to say so," replies this doctor humbly. "I think anyone
who deals with human situations on a regular basis,
whether as police officer, a social worker or a nurse,
would have an advantage as a writer."
Notably, however, Dr Durcan refrains
from using his experiences in medicine as fodder for
his fiction. The closest he comes to mixing work and
writing is in a story about a group of deluded volunteers
participating in a drug test, but the clinical trial
serves as little more than a backdrop for a story about
the power of self-delusion. The doctor claims that he
avoids using medical settings in his writing for both
personal and ideological reasons.
"Partly it's a natural desire to
compartmentalize my life, to keep work separate," he
explains. "I'm also hesitant to write about people with
diseases. I'm opposed to the use of illness as it so
often is in popular culture, as a plot device. And above
all," he adds with a smile, "I don't want my patients
to worry that they are going to show up as characters
in my stories."
A Short Journey by Car is
published by V�hicule Press.
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