Will Ferguson
Will Ferguson is an award-winning travel writer and novelist. His last work of fiction, 419, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He has won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour a record-tying three times and has been nominated for both the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. His new novel, The Shoe on the Roof, will be released October 17, 2017. Visit him at WillFerguson.ca
Ferguson studied film production and screenwriting at York University in Toronto, graduating with a B.F.A. in 1990. He joined the Japan Exchange Teachers Programme (JET) soon after and spent five years in Asia. He married his wife Terumi in Kumamoto, Japan, in 1995. They now live in Calgary with their two sons. After coming back from Japan he experienced a reverse culture shock, which became the basis for his first book Why I Hate Canadians. With his brother, Ian Ferguson, he wrote the bestselling sequel How to be a Canadian. Ferguson details his experiences hitchhiking across Japan in Hokkaido Highway Blues (later retitled Hitching Rides with Buddha), his travels across Canada in Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, and a journey through central Africa in Road Trip Rwanda. His debut novel, Happiness, was sold into 23 languages around the world. He has written for The New York Times, Esquire UK, and Canadian Geographic magazine.
“There, stacked high on his desk, was a tower of paper. Thick slabs of manuscript. Slush. Unsolicited, unagented, unloved. This was where dreams came to die. Book proposals, cover letters, entire manuscripts – they gathered like so much detritus on the desks of publishers everywhere.”
“Despair comes slowly, crawling its way up inside you until it threatens to overwhelm everything; it buckles the knees, makes you falter, makes you break your stride. In those moments she would will herself forward until despair was replaced by something stronger.”
“You, I love.”
“As a parent? My fear is that when we die, we'll have to watch all those moments in our lives when we were short-tempered with our children, all the times they needed our love and and we didn't give it, all those times we were distracted, or in a bad mood, all the times we were angry or impatient.”
“Deferring judgement to a later date resolves nothing and all you are left with is a box of jumbled slides and a collection of knick-knacks and odds and ends. Here a face. There a sunset.”
“To charakterystyczna cecha cywilizacji: niechciane,niezamawiane marzenia”
“Cała nasza ekonomia opiera się na ludzkich słabostkach,na złych nawykach i lękach.Moda.Bary fast food.Elektroniczne gadżety.Erotyczne zabawki.Ośrodki dietetyczne.Ogłoszenia towarzyskie.Skrajne sekty religijne.Salony fryzjerskie.Kryzys wieku średniego u mężczyzn.Szał zakupów.Całe nasze życie zbudowane jest na wątpliwościach i braku satysfakcji.Pomyśl,co by się stało,gdyby ludzie byli naprawdę,szczerze szczęśliwi.Całkowicie zadowoleni ze swojego życia.Nastąpiłby kataklizm”
“...when you are constantly prevailing upon the kindness of strangers-as a hitchhiker must-it keeps you in a positive frame of mind. Call it Zen and the Art of Hitchhiking. The Way of the Lift. The chrysanthemum and the Thumb. Heady on beer and the sound of my own voice, the aphorisms spilled out unchecked.”
“The great themes of Canadian history are as follows: Keeping the Americans out, keeping the French in, and trying to get the Natives to somehow disappear.”
“Many Canadian nationalists harbour the bizarre fear that should we ever reject royalty, we would instantly mutate into Americans, as though the Canadian sense of self is so frail and delicate a bud, that the only thing stopping it from being swallowed whole by the US is an English lady in a funny hat.”
“Hellraisers destroy only themselves, and they do it because they love life too much to fall asleep.”
“The two most important phrases in the human language are "If only" and "Maybe someday". Our past mistakes and our unrequited longings. The things we regret and the things we yearn for. That's what makes us who we are.”
“Obviously, he needed to kill Bubba, but how? The man was a trained prison guard twice his size. The tax auditors had been easy. Mr. Ethics had slapped them to death with their own attaché cases. And even then, his neighbours had chipped in to help him hide the bodies. "A tax auditor, you say? No problem. Let me get my spade.”
“Fear of death and the desire to live on, somehow, if only through our children. Or our grandchildren. Quixotic quest for immortality. It's sad and heroic and doomed - all at the same time.”
“You ever want to negotiate a hostage situation in Quebec, I'm your man. Send me in for a little parley and the francophone miscreants will flee, hands over bleeding ears.”