More than 10 years ago, Michael Redhill went on a driving trip with a friend. Even then, in 1990, a kid in his early 20s, he was already a published poet who’d had one play, Be Frank, produced at the Toronto Fringe festival. Even then, he was looking for things to wash over his mind and soak into his imagination.


Driving westward from Toronto, the pair rolled into Chicago and decided to visit the Art Institute. There Redhill saw for the first time the Bergman family’s vast collection of the strange, haunting works of Joseph Cornell, the reclusive American collage artist who put assemblages of feathers, insects, twigs, newspaper clippings, plastic toys, and other objects into wooden boxes. “You see one box, it’s an interesting keepsake,” says Redhill. “But rooms and rooms tell you the artist’s obsessions. I spent three hours just drowning in these things.”

A decade later, at age 34, he has finally waded ashore, with the publication of his first novel, Martin Sloane, about an artist whose works – though not his life or temperament – are inspired by the boxes of Joseph Cornell.

Curly haired, muscular, what the Irish would call “a broth of a boy,” Redhill is a proud, relieved father. Martin Sloane was not an easy birth, nor is it the only new arrival. In February he welcomed his second son, when baby Maxime joined Benjamin, now 2. While his partner Anne Simard did the heavy labour where Maxime was concerned, Redhill has also sweated prodigiously in literary terms, to bring forth four books in one year.

Earlier this year, Playwrights Canada Press brought out the text of Redhill’s Building Jerusalem, his theatrical exploration, set in 1899, of how people construct their future out of their current values. House of Anansi is publishing Light-crossing, a book of new poetry, and is reprinting Lake Nora Arms, Redhill’s 1993 poetry book. Meanwhile, he continues to work as managing editor of Brick magazine.

Looking at Redhill’s quick, alert, engaged blue eyes (slightly magnified behind Clark Kent glasses) one can only conclude that Maxime must be one of those miracle babies who lets hard-working parents get some rest. And that Redhill is one of those creators so brimming with ideas that sheer
intensity recharges his energies.

“There were 12 complete drafts of Martin Sloane between 1991 and the present,” he says. “The first four or five drafts bear almost no resemblance to what you read now. It was originally a collage novel with many points of view, clippings, bits of articles.” He adds frankly: “Not a lot of interest for the reader.”

A vigorous self-appraiser, he didn’t let those early versions out of his room. It wasn’t until Draft 5 that close friends were allowed to see the work in progress. They told him, “‘Noble failure,’ and I was crushed. I stopped writing for a year.” Then Redhill started again, in another round of manuscript masochism – he submitted Martin Sloane to several publishers and then withdrew it before they had a chance to reject it.

He even withdrew it from one publisher who accepted it – an act of monumental maturity from someone so young and ambitious. (“This publisher was a friend who I suspect cared more for me than for the book,” is how he explains it.)

Again and again he tried to drive a wooden stake through the heart of his Joseph Cornell novel, but it would not stay dead. So he finally confronted his ethical dilemma: Did he want to revive it once more only because he had invested so much time?

His and Anne’s first son, Benjamin, was born on Sept. 1, 1998. That same day, a Toronto literary agent named Jennifer Barclay left a message on Redhill’s answering machine, saying that she would like to represent him and find a publisher for Martin Sloane.

Barclay sold it to Doubleday in the spring of 1999, to Maya Mavjee, who had told Redhill two years before at a poetry reading that she liked his poetry. She said she wanted to be on the list if he ever wrote fiction.

Redhill says it was a happy relationship for his firstborn novel. But then, he is one of those rare writers who actually appreciate the importance of a good editor – not just after the book’s been published. That’s because he has been an editor himself for so long, first at Coach House Press (where he worked one-on-one with Elisabeth Harvor, Sharon Thesen, and André Alexis) and more recently at Brick.

“I am able to edit myself, and I rewrite obsessively,” he says. “But as a writer I know I need an editor. You can’t do brain surgery on yourself.”

Redhill describes his editor, Mavjee, as a “hyper-responsive reader,” who knew precisely what questions to ask. “More than anything,” he says, “she read the book closely and told me where it [needed clarity].”

And what of landing at Canada’s largest trade house, after a devotedly small-press background? Well, he’s not quite as small-press as his poetry and playwriting history would suggest. Redhill points to contract work for both large and small publishing houses, and a poetry collection – Asphodel – that was published by McClelland & Stewart. “It felt fortunate,” he says of his signing with Doubleday.

In brief, Martin Sloane is about a young woman, Jolene, who becomes enchanted by the works of an artist named Martin Sloane. Then Jolene falls in love with Sloane himself, a reticent Irish-Canadian artist who won’t talk about his work or his past. Jolene’s best friend, Molly, notices something about one of Sloane’s boxes – a work so special that Sloane has given it to Jolene to keep. Molly has seen something in the gift that her friend has missed – a peephole that reveals that the artist has placed a tiny, crowned doll inside the box, an apparition that can only be seen if the box is held and viewed in a special way.

This small failure of the recipient to fully see the giver’s gift becomes a source of terrible tensions. What else has Jolene missed? Would Martin have ever confessed the existence of the baby in the box had Molly not told Jolene about it? What else does Molly understand that Jolene does not; what other information can she compel Martin to give? (Jolene mourns: “He didn’t mind that Molly had invaded the silence that I had always, so assiduously, honoured.”)

Just as Martin Sloane does not want to point out every little trick and detail of his boxes, even to the young woman with whom he is intimate, neither does Redhill want to explain his work to his readers. He just wants them to enjoy a good story and feel some emotional connection; when it comes to finding the novel’s tricks and secret drawers, they’re on their own. As Sloane warns Jolene, “You have to be able to appreciate life knowing that you aren’t entitled to know all the answers.”

Redhill comments, “Martin doesn’t want to force people to look in a direction they’re not ready to look in. That’s how I like to be treated as a reader. So I must hold his view in some esteem. You don’t as a writer want to force a reader to experience something in a programmed way. What’s the point of creating the relationship in the first place?”

But some of the novel’s tricks are apparent. Obviously it’s about boxes: boxes of intellectual and artistic categories; the closed drawers of old love affairs; coffins; the black boxes that reveal flight paths; the emotional boxes we try to put relationships in; and the political boxes that trap people who are trying to escape war. With his stripped-down cast of only three main characters (the reader becoming the fourth invisible side of these relationships), Redhill has even structured his novel as a box.

“I don’t make a claim for the book being full of codes,” Redhill protests, laughing. “But I am conscious of the choices I’ve made.” And if you rewrite a book 12 times, those choices become solidly confirmed.

Redhill is a thoughtful craftsman – one who thinks, if not in codes, then in terms of structures and strategies. Significantly, he unwinds from his writing and editing by playing that most geometric of games, pool, with his “life pool partner,” the writer Michael Helm, and by working out blackjack strategies (“I enjoy that so much I know it’s dangerous.”)

The son of an obstetrician father who used to build tiny finicky balsa-wood models for pleasure, and an entrepreneur mom who ran a nanny-finding business, Redhill as a child was an obsessive organizer, card-collector and packrat – a little like Joseph Cornell and his fictional colleague Sloane.

“To write this novel I did a certain amount of reading on the personality of the collector, the obsessive organizer,” Redhill says. “It’s about seeking order out of chaos, being able to create a miniature order.” When asked to put his own various writing experiences – he has written five plays and brought forth five published books of poetry – into categorical boxes, Redhill obliges. “A poem is an impulse passing, and you have to attend to it quickly. There’s something naked about a poem. A play is public and you work with people, which is a real relief when you spend a lot of time working alone. A novel? I dunno. I’m a different person now than when I undertook this so lightly 10 years ago. The depth of commitment is stunning. But I will write another novel. You have all the tools at your disposal.”

By tools, he means the experience of having written in other forms. “To me, the novel is like a well-stocked kitchen,” he explains. “There are so many different ways you can write the novel. It is the most difficult of the three art forms because of the time commitment and elements that must be placed in balance.”

Redhill is prolific, and critically respected, but he’s not yet a household name. And he doesn’t care at all: “I’m a lucky bastard, what can I say?” he smiles. “I’m not rich and people don’t bother me. My hope for this novel is that readers will enjoy it, and it won’t change my life.”