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Dr Vincent Lam: "The book's
not about me"
Photo credit: Mark
coatesworth
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A chagrined Dr Vincent Lam is
ushered by his publicist into the imposing boardroom of
his Toronto publishing company. The 31-year-old emergency
physician, dressed in jeans and a red Shakespeare T-shirt,
apologizes quickly for being late. He forgot to put our
appointment in his Palm Pilot. It's not unusual for writers
to be late — and beneath that Shakespeare T-shirt
beats the heart of a writer — but I'll soon find
out it's highly unusual for Vincent Lam.
Dr Lam's literary debut, a collection
of short stories called Bloodletting and Other Miraculous
Cures (Doubleday), has been garnering the kind of
media attention most first-time novelists only dream
of. The book follows the lives of four medical students
on their road to becoming doctors.
We meet ambitious Ming, reckless
Fitz, pensive Sri, loyal Chen and stay with them from
exams to cadavers to residency to practising medicine.
The reader is also privy to the emotional roller coaster
at the centre of any coming of age story. These complicated
memories are fresh for the young Dr Lam, not long out
of his own studies. But he insists the stories aren't
autobiographical.
A
DOCTOR SECOND
Ask him how an emerg doc ended up a published novelist
and he'll tell you it was the other way around. He's
wanted to be a writer since he was a kid and says he
was "profoundly not interested" when his mother suggested
becoming a doctor or dentist because he was good with
his hands. But it was what he could hold in his hands
— books — that got him fired up. "I fell in
love with the idea that someone, sometime — perhaps
long ago — had put these words on paper and I could
read them and they would come full-fledged into a narrative
and images and sounds and experiences in me. I found
that was such a magical, amazing thing that I wanted
to be on the other side of the pen."
Even though his mother won the
career battle, he won the war. He still writes because
he can't help himself. "Stories are the absolute essence
of what we're all about as human beings," he says. "How
could I resist writing?"
Still, medicine seemed like a great
idea at the time. "To my simplistic adolescent mind,
it seemed perfect," he says. "I thought I would meet
people and get a better understanding of what makes
the mind tick." He definitely isn't in it for the money.
"I'm sure most doctors would agree that from a pure
money point of view, there are probably other things
we could all be doing."
IT
AIN'T ME
He denies that his characters' obsession with getting
into medical school is based on his own experience.
"Getting into medical school for a lot of people is
like a love affair," he laughs, "a very bad love affair.
It's like a quasi-romantic, quasi-religious quest, with
all else falling to the wayside and all these theories
on the inside scoop of how it's done, how to make it
happen. It's all give and no get. You just drive yourself
nuts."
Dr Lam claims the only story in
the book that's based in fact is "The Long Migration,"
inspired by a summer he spent in Brisbane with his grandfather,
who was then terminally ill. He's linked elements of
that story into his forthcoming novel, Cho Lon, Near
Forgotten, slated for publication next year. "It's
about this Chinese man who was in Vietnam during the
Vietnamese War and had two lives: a life of being a
gambler and a life of being a school owner and headmaster."
He's followed the adage 'write what you know' to the
letter here — his own family hails from the Chinese
expatriate community in Vietnam, as does that of Chen
in the book.
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Dr Vincent Lam
and his critically-acclaimed short story selection
(inset)
Photo credit: Margarita
Lam Antoniades
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Good friend Richard Munter, who
studied biology with him at University of Ottawa, says
Vincent was and is incredibly focused and tenacious.
"While most of us were falling asleep over our textbooks,"
he recalls, "Vincent was using colour coding, audio
recordings and hours of studying to ace everything.
He just kept pushing to get the grades and medical school
interviews.
"That description does not hint
at Vincent's creativity," he adds, "but in fact he's
very creative both in his writing and in all aspects
of his life. At university, he seriously considered
changing religion to overcome his girlfriend's parent's
objections about them being together. His coffee table
consists of an upside-down, fully functional toboggan
on wooden crates."
His editor, Maya Mavjee, knows
both the focused and creative sides of her writer. His
very strict approach to deadlines makes her feel nervous
about falling behind, she says, noting that in publishing,
things are usually the other way around. Hence the surprise
at his highly uncharacteristic tardiness for our meeting.
Dr Lam's busy routine includes
finding time to write, maintain his ER schedule at Toronto
East General and share some quality time with his wife
Margarita, a physician in family practice, and their
13-month-old son Theodore. It's not easy to juggle it
all, but Dr Lam is sure it's worth it.
"Doing medicine is very satisfying,
usually in an immediate way, so I have to force myself
to take a very long perspective in terms of carving
out time for writing," he says. "But I made a conscious
decision to do that because it's very important to me.
Writing is very high in the rank of things I have to
do."
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