Diane Schoemperlen, "Night Flight"

It’s December 9. Diane Schoemperlen, author of Forms of Devotion, remembers not to pit stop at the Lake of Indifference.

How would you describe your story?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: A curious combination of text and image that meanders and circles back on itself again and again with repeated motifs including knitting, maps, New York City, patience, fortitude, and darkness. I like to think that each reading of the story will reveal something new as the words and the collages intersect and intertwine on various levels.

When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?

DS: The writing of this story followed a far more circuitous and lengthy path than any of my other work. The text was originally written in 1999 as part of a multi-media art exhibit called La Nuit Blanche (The Sleepless Night) by Canadian artist Derek Besant. This exhibit was shown in various cities, including at Harbourfront in Toronto and at Centro de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. In the fall of 2007, as my own interest in combining text and image continued to develop, I renamed and revised the story and created my own full-colour collages to accompany it. In 2008 “Night Flight” with my collages was published in The New Quarterly. And here it is again in 2022, having now had, much to my delight, an evolving lifespan of 23 years!

What kind of research went into this story?

DS: I have been to New York City a few times, although never on a night flight, and I’ve never actually been to the New York Public Library so I had to research those details as well as the history of The Map of Tenderness. And I had to check to make sure I got the speed of light right.

What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?

DS: For me personally, the short story is a special form because it is the form with which I began my writing career almost 40 years ago. Although I have also published novels and non-fiction since then, the short story remains the form of my heart.

More generally speaking, I consider the short story to be the most expansive, flexible, and generous prose form of them all, one that especially lends itself to innovation and experimentation. There are so many things you can do in a short story (what I call “jazzing around”) that would not be sustainable in a novel. It is the ideal form in which to take risks.

As the editor of Best Canadian Stories 2021 (published by Biblioasis), here’s some of what I had to say about that in my introduction: “My own work has often been described as ‘challenging the short story form.’ Over the years I have found that the short story is always up to that challenge and can be the perfect vehicle for taking chances. It is always amenable to innovation, evolution, and revolution. Short stories must be written in the midst of trauma and despair and anger and shame, as well as in the midst of whatever fleeting moments of peace and hope any of us can come by now. The best short stories will always bring us news of the world and the shape of things to come.”

Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?

DS: Although I generally do a poor job of keeping it updated, people can visit my website at www.dianeschoemperlen.com.

What’s the best gift you’ve ever been given?

DS: The best gift I’ve ever been given was, in fact, an extravagant gift I gave myself for Christmas in 2012: a 13-volume boxed set of the complete Chekhov stories, translated by Constance Garnett and published by Ecco Press. I have read the complete set all the way through from start to finish, but it is also a marvel to dip into at random whenever I need to remind myself how much I love writing short stories and how much power they contain.

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