CBC-1’s Shelagh Rogers: The Last
Chapter 23
April 2012,“It’s about the ghosts of family”.
April 2012,“It’s about the ghosts of family”.
Some of Alexi Zentner’s thought on
myth, belief and faith…
Ne Je’schijchte dee fonn oole Tiede staumt, jleewe onn en Gloowe
 |
| Alexi Zentner (c) Peter J. Thompson |
(Note that this is not a complete transcript
– to review this material, please reference the CBC link archive: http://www.cbc.ca/thenextchapter/popupaudio.html?clipIds=2225014592
(downloaded 23 April 2012).
Roger’s questions are
approximations. The answers are as
accurate as possible.
Alexi Zentner is the author of Touch.
“It is
impossible to determine what is myth and what is Truth” says Steven, an
Anglican priest in Zentner’s debut novel Touch.
“Memories
are another way to raise the dead.” Quoting Zentner from People Magazine.
“It’s about ghosts of
family … it’s really sort of a book about the way in which stories become myths
and become legends and the ways that families pass them down, not only within families
but within countries and nations…”
What interests you
about family stories?
“… my parents were
story tellers and one of the things I loved about them is trying to figure out
what part of them are actually true… and I think that that is something that
does happen within families – an event happens, and it’s true, and its told and
retold and passed down… by the time that it gets down to the grandchildren,
they become these big fish stories… but we tend to forget that there is usually
something true at the heart of them … and it’s interesting to me which of those
family stories survive and why.”
Can you apply this to
the nature of myth….?
… I think some of them
started as sort of cautionary tales, but most of those cautionary tales are
built in some sort of reality… we dress them up in larger stories… Myths start somewhere and they have a
resonance for a reason and I think that most myths are very specific stories
and because of that specificity they become universal.
