Photo from Will Ferguson's official blogThough the idea is now taking off with e-books, Will Ferguson is perhaps the first person to have a soundtrack to go with his novel. It all started with a conversation in a bar in Toronto. The honky tonk country band of Tom Phillips was playing and Will told his publisher friend that was the sound he wanted for his book.
Why not? They could see no reason, and they went ahead and approached the band. When Ferguson launched Spanish Fly (Penguin 2007), the original CD was ready to go, with a sound track that includes lyrics by Ferguson as well as Phillips. The novel's plot line follows the "grifters and drifters" through the dust bowl era as they con their way towards the bright lights of Silver City, USA.
Ferguson told this story at the Sechelt Writers' festival in 2009. He was backed up by the sad-sounding lyrics of the emaciated Tom Phillips, who couldn't have fit more absolutely the title of his band, the Men of Constant Sorrow.
Spanish Fly made the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award longlist and earned its author his fourth Leacock Medal for Humour.
Indeed, Will Ferguson is well-known as a humourist. Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw (2004) won the Leacock Medal in 2005. Bastards and Boneheads (1999) is a listing of Canadian Prime Ministers, classified each as either the one or the other. There is no third category.
With his brother Ian, Ferguson also won the Libris Booksellers Non-fiction Book of the Year (How to be a Canadian, 2002). Among other honours, he won he won the CAA Award for History (Canadian History for Dummies 2001) and the Pierre Berton Award for History (2005).
In 2009, he published a travel memoir called Beyond Belfast.
I love Will's non-fiction!
ReplyDeleteI tried to read Spanish Fly, really, I did, but just couldn't get through it.