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March 10, 2006
Nice boy writes tough
Sellyn's first work set to be a publishing success
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
Nathan Sellyn exudes a confidence that belies his 22 years. Then
again, most 22-year-olds aren't prepping for the release of their
first book after graduating from the Princeton creative writing
program under the tutelage of literary luminary Joyce Carol Oates.
"Pretty much right after graduation, I started shopping it
around," said Sellyn in a recent interview with the Independent.
He did so without the aid of an agent – although he has since
joined the stable of Toronto-based Ann McDiarmid.
More than half the stories in Sellyn's first collection, Indigenous
Beasts, were written as part of his senior thesis at college.
He credits the creative writing program with fostering his talent.
"It allowed me to discover what about my style defined my work,"
he observed. "It just gave me confidence being a writer. I
think there's probably a great number of people who have the ability
to write successfully, but sometimes it takes a little outside encouragement
to believe in yourself to the extent where you're going to seek
publication."
Indigenous Beasts, which will also be serialized in Toro
magazine, was snapped up by Vancouver's Raincoast Books. Publisher
Michelle Benjamin is already expecting great things from Sellyn,
calling his work "some of the most powerful and affecting I've
ever had the privilege to publish. The characters in these stories
are often furious and violent, but with a remarkably intense emotional
core. Nathan's work is astonishingly wise and rich."
Quite an accolade for a new writer. Sellyn himself was surprised
to discover just how hard Raincoast was prepared to push for him.
Usually short story collections are not as heavily hyped as long-form
fiction, but Sellyn's work has been given "the same kind of
marketing treatment and fanfare that a novel would be," he
said.
The stories in Indigenous Beasts do not make for light reading.
Inspired by one of his literary heroes, Bret Easton Ellis, Sellyn
has turned out a catalogue of dark, unsettling characters. They
bash each other's heads in with baseball bats, vomit outside nightclubs
and euthanize eviscerated sheep.
"I'd say that certainly is my style," Sellyn admitted.
"It's not, perhaps, entirely reflective of my personality,
let's hope. One of the things I feel about the collection is that
in all the stories, the characters kind of build to this moment
of climax and often it's a form of aggression. I guess what I'm
trying to get across with those kind of moments where people have
access to their primal instincts. A lot about the characters is
revealed in those climactic scenes."
Of course, underneath it all, really, is just a nice Jewish boy
– albeit a rather unobservant one. Sellyn grew up outside Montreal,
in an environment he describes as "extreme Reform. I grew up
in a very suburban community where there was no synagogue. It was
a very, very small town. [But] certainly, I do feel that it is part
of my identity. One of the things I've always really appreciated
about being Jewish is that it connects you to a much larger community,
regardless of your formal involvement in the religion you're always
going to be embraced and that's something that I've always loved.
"In terms of the authors I most admire, I'm an absolute devotee
of both Leonard Cohen and Mordecai Richler. Richler is kind of the
godfather of Canadian literature – he was always someone who
I thought captured the Canadian identity in print better than anyone
before or since."
As for his own portrayal of the Canadian psyche, don't expect fairies
and flowers to pop out of Sellyn's imagination any time soon.
"There's this kind of reputation about Canadians that we're
very soft and fuzzy people," he mused, "the nicest people
on the planet – and while I think that's true; that we are
very polite and kind people – at the same time, we have the
same dark vices as the rest of the world carries. My characters
are composed of the same basic instincts."
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