In this series New Jersey based author Lauren B Davis speaks about her creative process behind her work as an acclaimed author, and also her career as a teacher in a course she has developed called Sharpening the Quill.
Our Daily Bread
Our Daily Bread is a compelling, potent and addictive read. And recently this latest novel from Lauren B. Davis (Radiant City, The Stubborn Season) was named as one of Globe and Mail's Top 100 Books of 2011. Our Daily Bread is about the consequences that arise when a society once whole, adapts and Us Vs Them attitude.
Long shunned by a religious order of Gideonites in the town of Gideon, The Others (Them) live on a North Mountain and because they have no choice and need to survive, they have turned to criminal acts and bootlegging activities. Through generations they have also perpetrated terrible acts against their children beginning with psychological torture and far worse.
The God fearing townspeople turn a blind eye to this with the group mind set that these mountain people do not know any better... but one of Them wants a better life, as things between North Mountain and Gideon begin to shift.
Sylvia Plath, Anais Nin, Bad Poetry, Getting to the Page
When you were younger growing up in Montreal, you wrote poetry inspired by the work of Sylvia Plath and Anais Nin.
Lauren B. Davis: " Of course I was. I wrote a lot of really incredibly bad poetry which was wisely rejected by some of the better journalists in Canada. (she laughs)
But then you became a short story writer and novelist. How would you describe this process?
Lauren B. Davis: "It is hard. I am not one of those people who sit down at the page and the angels descend and gently hover wavering their wings over me until the words come – that is not what it is like for me. It is work.
"Writing is like having a six hundred pound St Bernard in the house, and the weather is dreadful. All you really want to do is sit in the front of the fire and read your book, but there is a six hundred pound St. Bernard that is standing there with its leash in its mouth demanding that you walk it and the more you ignore it, the more likely it is to pee on your carpet and eat your couch. Ultimately it just becomes easier to walk the damn dog, than it does to ignore it, and that for me is the way writing is. It's a nagging, it's an urging..
"If I don't get to the page and get to work I become increasingly neurotic and my husband looks at me and says 'don't you think you would like to go and write something today.' He is right. I am always much better when I have done my work."
One writer to another, sometimes you feel like a machine, you know you have to do this. Writing is also about discipline as well …
Lauren B. Davis: "Yes it is. And I do discipline myself but there are writers that only write when the muses rings the doorbell. I can't imagine. I don't think anyone would ever show up. When I am working on a novel it has to go forward by 500 words a day. But I start every day by reading what I wrote yesterday which means if I don't like what I wrote yesterday I will write 1000 words today. Some days it is does not take too long maybe three or four hours but other days 11 pm at night I am still in my jammies, have not had a shower yet and apparently not going to bed anytime soon. That is the way it goes, and if I don't do that then I risk losing the book!…"
Do you read your work out loud?
Lauren B. Davis: " I read my own work yes....
Let's talk about Our Daily Bread. About picking up the pen and facing the page. What was the research arc behind it?
Nova Scotia, The Ozarks, The RCMP, Donna Goler
Lauren B. Davis: "It is very long arc honestly. When I was 16/17 I lived in Nova Scotia and while I was there I heard all of these rumours, at least I thought they were just rumours, about Those People who lived in the mountain. Those people .. Them.
"I heard all of these dreadful things about child prostitution and deformed babies and incest and every horrific rumour you could imagine. And I assumed it was all nonsense, and just a rural legend I thought what is this – the Ozarks?
I did not think this was possible because I could not believe that if it were true that someone would not have gone in to stop it. And then of course in the early 80's Donna Goler (of the Goler Clan) who was one of the little girls involved, told her teacher what was happening to her. And the teacher she told did not happen to be from that neighbourhood – she was not even from Nova Scotia - I think she was from Ontario. She went 'Oh My God, this can't happen.'
She called someone in the RCMP and the person she called in the RCMP also did not happen to be from the area. And then the entire story broke and it haunted me. It really haunted me because I had become one of those people who had not done anything. And how could that be? How could we just let these horrible things happen to children.'
Us and Them, On South Mountain, New England Puritans
In your research you found something even more disturbing....
Lauren B. Davis: "I found out that it had not just been happening to these children but this had been going on for generations after generation after generation. I found all of this out when I came across this book called On South Mountain which is a phenomenal non fiction journalist account of these incidents. What I learned from that book was that in fact this whole community had been founded by a group of puritans who had left New England. And I guess they were practicing in a way that was not quite puritanical enough. Hard to imagine...
"When they arrived in this (Nova Scotian) neck of the woods anyone who did not conform to this strict set of rules was cast out and shunned. They were not allowed to come to the schools, or churches, they were not allowed to marry and they were not given any jobs. And so they became this very isolated group of people and they became demonized over time. So the assumption was there is nothing you can do. What do you expect from them? And now of course we are living in a time where we are bombarded with this idea that we have to be either Us or Them .. pick a Them."
There are lots of Them....
Lauren B. Davis " Gays and hetrosexuals, Muslims and Jews, Democrats and Republicans... Because I am living in the States these days, I hear a lot of that. There is always somebody that has to be Other. And we are defining ourselves like this more and more. This thing was haunting me in my head from this community and writing this book seemed to be the way to investigate this very dangerous phenomena. But it also gave me the opportunity to imagine or to give examples of how unlikely friendships can transform everything."
Albert Erskine, Dorothy Carlisle, Stanford Prison Experiment, Abu Ghraib
Lauren B. Davis:"There are a couple of people in this book. There is one, the main character Albert Erskine, the family name I have used is Erskine, and he comes down off the mountain because he wants to get out, but he is torn. Because all kids are left up there and he cannot leave the children. And then there is a woman in town (Dorothy Carlisle) who has been leaving things up in the compound where they live for many years anonymously. She is not ready to give up on these people and she will not attach herself to the "groupthink" that is going on down in the town. Things begin to shift there."
The reader is likely left with the question who is worse? The People on the mountain who perpetrate these atrocities or the people in the village who would rather ignore them ..
Lauren B Davis: "That is exactly it. Part of the problem is that unless we are willing to look at the shadow in the mirror, unless we are willing to say that under the right set of circumstances; I too, might be doing exactly these sorts of things. Think of the Stanford University psychology experiment.
"There was a professor (Dr. Philip Zimbardo) that put together a group of students, some as prisoners and some as guards. Within 48 hours the guards had become sadists and the prof. in fact became complicit. They had to shut the experiment down a week and a half early because it was so obvious how quickly people given ultimate power over other people can become the worst of humanity. We see this happen in Abu Ghraib who are perfectly good people under other circumstances. But the potential for this behaviour is in all of us, and if we do not recognize that in ourselves, how do we stop ourselves from getting sucked into the mob mentality."
To the Erskines this is normal behavior because that is how they live and that is all they know.
Lauren B. Davis: "If you have ever spoken to someone who has been raised in an abusive family, the children do not really understand that this is abuse. They may know this is awful but they don't know there is an alternative."
To them, this is just something they do.
Lauren B Davis: "The world is the world."
Literature, Empathy, The Limbic System
There are other viewpoints in this book besides Albert's, so you become an empath of sorts.
Lauren B. Davis: "I think one of the great gifts of literature is empathy. When we read a book, if it is well written, if we read a book about someone who is very different than us, what literature offers us is the ability to live in their skin. Nothing else can do this … film cannot do it, theatre cannot do it, music cannot do it, and if they try it is only to varying degrees.
"But it is only with really well written literature that we go inside the sensations of another person. We think what they think, we see through their eyes, we feel through their senses and apparently it has something to do with the lymbic system in the brain. It is the way we take information in and it feeds through the limbic system which is why literature it's only sense details. If you write in ideas it does not have the same effect, but if you write in things that are tactile and things that are sensual then you feel what the characters are feeling."
For more info on Lauren B. Davis including the backstory of The Goler Clan go to Lauren B.Davis
Coral Andrews - Coral Andrews is an independent media professional who has been writing in Canada for over 30 years.
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